Baidu, the largest search engine in China, bigger than Google in the country, is looking for new acquisitions to solidify its position and maybe even extend its lead. Few people outside of China have heard of the search engine, but with the nation being the largest Internet market in the world, with over 300 million web users representing one fifth of the world's online population, it's safe to say it is a powerful company.

“People approach us and we get to look at a lot of things,” Baidu Inc. CEO Jennifer Li told Bloomberg News in an interview. “Internet is at an early stage of its development. It’s dynamic, and we need to stay ahead.”

The focus of the acquisitions will be mainly on the mobile search and e-commerce markets, in which it wants to become a big player. Google is increasing the competition in the mobile sector with a recent deal with China Mobile, the country's biggest mobile phone operator, which owns more than two-thirds of the market. In the e-commerce sector, Baidu wants to become the main competitor for the Alibaba Group Holdings, in which Yahoo has a major stake.

Baidu is currently the biggest player in the paid-search market in the country, owning more than 60 percent of it, followed by Google with a little over 23 percent, but the Mountain View, California-based company is growing at a faster rate than its main rival. The company wasn't very active on the acquisition front in the past, but that may soon change, and it may look for opportunities outside its core search business. The news comes as Google has seen increased pressure in China recently, removing its Google Suggest feature after several complaints from government agencies.