Searching for China

With Google giving up the fight in China, my earlier prediction about Baidu probably means they will be second to Google in search queries by the end of 2011 not 2012. Although this may feel like a great opportunity for Yahoo/Microsoft, it’s not. For the last few years, I spent a lot of time understanding the Asia digital advertising market and doing business there has proven a very different challenge of US companies. Currently Baidu doesn’t seem interested in launching in any other market so partnering with a second tier search engine seems unlikely. Google’s power has already changed the advertising field in most markets which has essentially left no competition in search. This may however push other countries to rethink how much free reign they want to give Google. This will be an interesting year for Google with the fastest growing market now out of their plans.