The company plans to increase the number of Chinese employees

Mar 8, 2007 11:44 GMT  ·  By

Google tries a different strategy to conquer Asia after many of its attempts were useless because the Chinese leader Baidu is really the most powerful portal of the region. Since the company announced its plans to expand the services in China, Google tried to improve its presence in the country by opening new offices or introducing new Chinese online solutions but Baidu's monopoly is quite impressive. Today, the search giant gives it another try after its officials announced new job openings in China, Google looking to have between 200 and 300 engineers in the Asian market.

"The company aims to have between 200 and 300 engineers in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai in a year's time, Google China's president, Lee Kai-fu, said after a press briefing Friday in Beijing. Google has more than 100 engineers in the nation, he said. Google plans to hire "thousands of people" for its Beijing development center to create services for China's more than 137 million Internet users, the company's chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, said last April. The Mountain View, California, company added online map and Internet spreadsheet services last month in a bid to catch Beijing's Baidu.com, which has a China market share three times larger than Google's," the International Herald Tribune reported.

The numbers are not quite the ones expected by Google because it seems like Google's Chinese shares rose from 16 percent to 17 percent while Baidu's were increased to 58 percent from 57 percent. As you surely know, China is more than a simple market because it owns an impressive number of Internet users so it's obvious the giants are looking to attract them. Both Google and Yahoo tried several times to be more present in China but Baidu, the most powerful Asian portal, is regarded as the only competition for the two companies.