14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, news about three of the big four in the music industry announced that they have teamed up against Chinese search engine dominator Baidu, which links to sites that offer free pirated music downloads. Google doesn't seem to care, or perhaps it just wanted to get a breath of fresh air from the Yahoo! problem it is facing back home, in the United States.
Apparently, an unnamed source of Reuters said, the Mountain View-based company is in the late stages of planning the move, but had hoped to keep it a secret until it deemed it necessary to start advertising it. The three big music companies involved with yesterday's Baidu lawsuit could be the ones that back Google in the venture, but names have not been disclosed. However, there're only four, so it's a 75 percent chance to get them straight: Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd. Some additional smaller brands have also been contacted by Google by the dozen, the report says.
Google's attempts to overthrow Baidu off the Chinese market might seem laughably ironic from the outside, because the Mountain View-based company is exactly in the same spot Yahoo! is in, trailing Google with a safe margin, in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, I doubt they're aiming for the stars. That age of almost instantaneous search share growth is long gone and now it's a battle set to last.
Baidu owns 60.1 percent of the search market in China, while Google is way behind it, with only 25.9 percent. Yahoo! China is third, owning 9.6 percent. In a parenthesis, I'd like to note that Yahoo! has been in the Asian country far longer than Google has, but still managed to remain behind the Mountain View-based company.