China's largest search company is to enter China's e-commerce market, in an effort to use its search technologies and popular online communities to win a share of the personal online trading market dominated by Alibaba's Taobao.com.
Baidu.com had set up a business department to prepare the trading platform connecting individual online sellers and buyers, which was set to launch next year, said the spokesman with the company.
The Nasdaq-listed search engine firm believed the increasing reliance of e-commerce on search engines and online communities would help it compete with Taobao.com, which controls more than 80 percent of the market.
Baidu.com has the biggest Chinese knowledge community and is the first choice for 74.5 percent Chinese when they use a search engine, according to a survey conducted by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
Of the 63.8 million e-commerce users, 49.2 percent made online searches to find comments from other buyers before they went to trading websites, according to studies from the Internet economy research center, iResearch Consulting Group.
A Taobao.com spokesperson congratulated Baidu on the move, saying the introduction of new players would help the market grow.
Ebay, with 15.4 percent of the market, says the market still has big potential, which required more powerful players to explore new ways to develop the industry appropriately.
Baidu still needed "an experienced team on business operations with enough execution power" to make progress in an unfamiliar market, commented Internet analyst Lv Bowang.