Microsoft's Bing search engine, according to a report by The New York Times, will power English-language search services on Baidu.com. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Currently, English searches on Baidu number as high as 10 million per day, the company says. "More and more people here are searching for English terms,” company Kaiser Kuo said. "But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it."
China's internet population -- the largest in the world -- surpassed 477 million users in March, making it a potentially lush and lucrative playground for Bing and giving Microsoft a substantial edge over Google in the Chinese search market.
Google, by contrast, has had a tempestuous relationship with the Chinese government over its censorship requirements. Google.cn continues to exist but links users to its Hong Kong search site for censor-free results.