Baidu Challenges Google On Japanese Soil

We all know Google is the king of Internet search engines. Obviously, some may not agree, and they may be right - I didn't say that Google is the best all-around search engine, I simply said Google is the king, and sometimes a king doesn't have to be the best all-around performer. For now, Google is best thing we have...but it seems its Chinese counterpart, Baidu, started to expand and challenge Google on foreign territory (Baidu is the most used search engine in China already), heating up things a bit...

In the US, things are written in stone: there's Google, then comes Yahoo, then simply "the others". Although some smaller search engines are very good for specific areas of interest, Google is "the king", as I was saying. In Europe, things aren't much different, the only differences being in the "others" area, but we won't talk about that. The burning issue for both Yahoo and Google is Asia, where things don't look so simple...

Let's leave China behind, because things are clear there. Just look at the graphic above, and you'll understand. In Japan, Google also has some problems, since in the last 7 years, the leading search engine was Yahoo, with over 43 million users, while Google only had about 28 million, gaining second place.

According to various reports, it seems Baidu isn't playing a clean game, as long as it was revealed that some users ended up on that site through the help of an IP address redirection from... you got it, Google!

Well, we need to wait and see how things are going to evolve, as long as Baidu Japan's division chief Masuda Jun doesn't give any relevant information when asked:"Following the formal launch of our Japan site, we expect to see even greater user reception to the four different Japanese language services we will offer, including Web search, image search, video search and blog search services.", he said today, in a public statement.

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