Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant, announced Monday it has reached an agreement with Microsoft that will allow users to directly obtain the results generated by the English Bing, of American society. Baidu and Bing should start offering this service common in late 2011.
"The cooperation between Baidu and Bing will jeopardize the technological advantages of both partners and will provide the best search experience for users who need results in English," said Zhang Dongchen, the head of Baidu. The agreement will also allow Baidu to enter the foreign market research on the Internet, Zhang said, without elaborating. Baidu has about 10 million queries per day in English, mostly from professionals or students, a relatively low figure compared with 477 million users claimed by Baidu, undisputed leader of the research in China.
Neither Microsoft or Baidu have disclosed the exact terms of the agreement, including how search results are censored. Chinese law requires a filtering of important research results, both on the political content as pornography, this censorship, combined with a series of hacking attempts, has prompted Google to channel research through its servers in Hong Kong, where the censorship law is not in effect.
