Google announces China deal

Google has signed a new cooperation deal with leading Chinese web portal, Sina.com, Sina announced today. The giant global internet search provider is locked in a battle for dominance with local search firm Baidu, which controls more than half the Chinese search market.

“Sina is China's most influential web portal. This deal clearly demonstrates Google China's strategy of localization,” said Google China CEO, Kai-fu Lee.

Under the terms of the deal, Google will eventually accept advertising from Sina's customers and place advertising on Sina's pages, Sina announced today. Sina will continue to feature a Google search box prominently on its Chinese home page. The companies will also cooperate on news search.

“This cooperation will increase portal Sina's influence and audience, and expose Chinese users more closely to Google's brands, products and services,” Sina announced.

“I believe that this is only the start for cooperation between us. We will actively broaden this cooperation in future," predicted Sina's CEO, Cao Guowei.

Replaces lost partnership

Last month, one of Google's largest Chinese search partners, Netease, revealed that it will stop featuring Google's search on its site this year, as it is developing its own search engine.

Recent assessments of market share in China's search market have put Baidu's share at around 60 per cent, while Google holds less than half that. However, Google has won praise for the quality of its search results.

Financial and profit-sharing details of the deal were not disclosed. Other details were still under discussion, executives said.

Correction: The original version of this story omitted plans to offer Google ad placements to Sina advertising customers.

Read Sina's announcement of the deal (in Chinese).
See video of the press conference with transcript (in Chinese, video may not function correctly on some web browsers)