After their recent skirmish with the Chinese government over Internet porn, Google China is back online. And they're already optimistic: apparently they're poised to announce a Q2 revenue increase in China of 25% over the previous quarter. (And in this economy, that's not just great; that's phenomenal!)
Brand Republic reports that Google China will also see operating revenue increases of 45% to 50% over the second quarter of last year. For owning only 30% of the Chinese search market, that seems pretty impressive. And the revenue boost from April, May and June of this year probably wasn't because of a jump in market share-they've only added eight percentage points to their marketshare over the last two years.
Meanwhile, Baidu continues to dominate the Chinese search market with 64%, according to Brand Republic. And it's not losing ground to Google, either-Baidu is up six percentage points from two years ago. So it would seem that smaller players in the market are losing market share to the two leaders. Brand Republic doesn't mention on a similar revenue boost in Q2 for Baidu, but the Chinese search giant did have a strong first quarter this year.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes that the company continues to work with the Chinese government over its pornography concerns.
What do you think? Is Google betting better at monetizing in China, or are people just suddenly more willing to click on search ads? Do you think Baidu is seeing similar gains?
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