Google is facing a popularity crisis in China as it lags behind Yahoo and, Baidu. While still king of the worldwide search engines, Google has not succeeded in becoming favorite on the Chinese market as it currently occupies the third place in a ranking of Internet search providers. These statistics were revealed in an analysis produced by market researcher Analysis International that places Baidu, the local search engine at the top of the Chinese users' preferences.

During the first quarter of 2006, estimates point out that Baidu held a 43.9% of the market, in terms of revenue, with a serious advantage over the runner up, Yahoo. With 21.1%, Yahoo China has topped Google proving yet again that it is a superior brand to the one created in Mountain View. The fact that the Chinese variant of Yahoo is being managed by Alibaba.com while the Sunnyvale online giant keeps only a 40% stake, has proven to be a successful market strategy. Google China's revenue has secured third place for the Mountain View search engine with a 13.2% of the market, followed closely by Sohu.com with 9.2%.

As the Chinese Internet market is still in its development stage, search engine related revenue totaled just $37.7 million or 303 million renminbi in the first quarter of 2006. This means that Yahoo China and Google earned 64 and 40 million renminbi. In this context, Google China's revenue is but spare change compared to its $945 million income generated outside the US.