http://www.canadianbusiness.com/technology/companies/article.jsp?content=20100426_10011_10011
Since’s Google’s feud with the Chinese government to provide uncensored results, the company’s operations have been reduced greatly due to China’s “Great Firewall”. Just recently, China Unicom, the country’s second largest wireless carrier, dropped Google search as the default search engine for their handsets and instead allowed for the manufacturers to choose from a list of alternatives.
With China’s booming internet base of over 350 million and with Google being slowly taken out, Bing has taken the initiative to take a portion of the market share that Google had in China – approximately 36%. Motorola has already agreed to include Bing as an alternative search engine for smartphones that operate with the Android operating system in China.
But Bing has a long way to go – currently, it only possesses 5% of the Chinese Search market. In addition, analysts say that Bing will have a difficult time capitalizing on Google’s market share as competition from Baidu, China’s homegrown leading search engine, will be extremely high. Many people tend to use things they are familiar with, and if Chinese internet users can’t use Google, its very likely they will switch to Baidu instead of Bing.
Microsoft has already spent $100 million in rebranding Bing, and despite the overwhelming obstacles, the management team remains optimistic about their investment. How will Bing react to the competition and censorship issues that Google once faced, and ultimately, will Microsoft benefit from Google’s actions in China?