Baidu.com and Alibaba.com, two of China's major Internet search
engines, ranked the world's 10 most popular search engines last
month by comScore, an Internet research firm.
Nasdaq-listed Baidu ranked third, with 5.2 percent of worldwide
searches, according to the survey of 66.2 billion search
queries.
Baidu is often referred to as China's version of Google due to
the Chinese-language search engine's soaring popularity and
profits. It made a net profit of US$24.2 million in the third
quarter of 2007.
Alibaba.com got 0.8 percent of global searches, worked its way
to 10th place, its first appearance in the top ten, according to
the survey.
Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com, the business-to-business unit of
Alibaba Group, is one of China's fastest growing Internet
companies.
Its registered members soared to 24.6 million in 2007 from 6
million in 2004. Paying members increased to 255,000 by June 2007
from 77,000 in 2004.
Google ranked first with 62.4 percent of search share, about
five times more than runner-up Yahoo with 12.8 percent.
Microsoft's websites came in fourth with 2.9 percent, followed
by the South Korea's NHN Corporation with 2.4 percent.
(Xinhua News Agency January 27, 2008)
