Google Inc, the world's biggest online search engine, has hired 70 engineers over the past six months in China for research and development as the company tries to win market share from local rivals including Baidu.com Inc (百度).
The engineers were employed for the Mountain View, California-based company's operations in Beijing, Kai-fu Lee (李開復), president of Google China, said yesterday at an analyst briefing.
Competition in China has increased as Google and Yahoo Inc vie with local search engines for a share of the world's second-largest Internet market. The number of online users in China rose 18 percent to 111 million last year, according to government data. Lee, who was previously employed by Microsoft Corp, leads development of Google's Chinese language services.
"One of the most important things Google must do is localize its services for China," said Chen Haiying, an analyst with Beijing-based technology research company Analysys International. "By doing that, it will be able to compete much better with Baidu.com."
Baidu.com Inc, the most popular search engine in China, had a 46.5 percent share of the market last year, while Google had 27 percent, according to Shanghai-based research company iResearch Inc.
Google has more than tripled its Chinese language search index in recent months, Lee said.
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