Baidu CTO Li Yinan: The next five years of E-commerce is the focus

September 10 News, Baidu CTO Li Yinan in Thursday, said in an interview with Reuters, in view of the company's large-scale expansion plans, is expected in the Chinese online search market in the near future to maintain its position ahead of Google.

Baidu has launched a series of new products this year, aiming to maintain its dominance. But companies are facing severe challenges from portals such as Sina and NetEase, and Google, which is increasingly localized, poses a threat.

Li Yinan said that the competition between the two sides has been 10 years, not just at this moment in the competition. We have a lot of new innovations that will help us stay dominant.

Baidu in August launched a new search platform named box Computing, user input questions do not need to click the link, the system can retrieve the relevant answers. He looked forward to Baidu this new product to enhance the company's market share, according to Analysys International, the two quarter to revenue, Baidu accounted for China's Internet search market 61.6% of the share, Google accounted for 29%.

UBS analyst Li Wenlin in the study, said Baidu's new search products better than Google, because the Chinese web site online information chaos, and Chinese to order more than English.

Li Yinan says box calculations are already available on the Web site, and more versatility will be available in time, but no specific timetable has been disclosed.

In addition, Baidu is also interested in expanding its name for the E-commerce platform, to intervene in China's fast-growing enterprises to consumer E-commerce (business-to-business) market. He said that in the next five years, E-commerce will be our focus.

Google, which held only 2% of China's market in 2003, has grown into a strong competitor for Baidu, thanks to new features such as free music downloads for Chinese internet users.

But analysts say Google lags behind Baidu not in technology but in sales and marketing. According to a report released last month by UBS, Google does not have a direct sales force in China, while Baidu sells 3600 people.

We don't think Google can get as much market share as before. UBS analyst Li Wenlin said in the report.

The most likely is a more stable competitive landscape, and if Google can provide more attractive products, while maintaining the current pace of localization, or can slowly erode Baidu's market share. Li Wenlin said.

Last week, Google's global vice-president and president of Greater China, Lee Kai-fu, resigned and plunged into his own venture capital ventures. Google then announced that Wenluo and Liu Yun were responsible for engineering development and business operations.

Both of us (Baidu and Google) will continue to enhance the quality of products, I do not think we will be in any respect to them. Baidu's Li Yinan said.

He added that we are actively and quickly moving forward (our products) and we are developing faster than our competitors.

In the two quarter of this year, Baidu launched its Phoenix Nest advertising system (Phoenix Nest), a system similar to Google's AdWords. Baidu expects revenue for the three quarter to be 1.84-189 million trillion, compared with an average estimate of 178.9 million dollars for analysts.

Analysts believe Phoenix Nest advertising system should be Baidu's key growth driver for the next few quarters, as China's search market continues to expand rapidly.

Baidu's share price has risen about 180% per cent this year, with a corresponding P/e ratio of 56.6.