Google is revamping its effort in China to overtake Baidu. Google through its new efforts to get a better marketing share in China is offering free music downloads to its Chinese users. So far Google has not ventured into offering music downloads to any other part of the world. It is a clear indication that Google is trying to do the extra mile to cover the Chinese market. Google already tried to make some efforts last year to acquire Chinese market but it did not make see much success. Google is hoping to reach new milestones this year with the Chinese market. Google knows the potential of the Chinese market, it is one of the largest internet communities in the world and if it gets a break through, it will increase its profit manifold.
Google is trying to take advantage of the popularity of the free music downloads that is currently seen in China. Google is hoping to form alliance with the big music brands like Warner music, Sony and Universal music. When compared to the United States, Google has no comparable growth in China. Baidu, which is the Chinese portal, rules the search market in China. People prefer Baidu because it is more of a portal like Yahoo and MSN. They prefer to find everything in one place rather than using a search only search engines. All in one portals are more colorful and have variety, which attracts the Chinese market. Unless Google makes changes to mimic Baidu, their success rate will be rather slow.
Though people will come to Google for free music downloads, they will continue to stick to Baidu for rest of their needs. It is surprising that even Yahoo and MSN which share the portal like nature did not do well in China. China is also known for movie downloads and the current move of Google is making its competitor wonder whether Google will go yet another step and allow its users with free movie downloads. Currently, Baidu holds 62% of the Chinese search market, which is closely comparable to Google’s position with the US.
While music lovers will appreciate Google’s efforts, it is still a question whether the free music downloads will raise other legal issues from the music companies as well as from the music download sites. We are to see the repercussions of Google’s latest announcements on its new initiatives with the Chinese market. Chinese internet users are currently using plenty of illegal music download sites that have plagued the Chinese market. With Google’s initiative to allow free music downloads Google hopes that the use of illegal sites will come down. While closing one of the doors of the illegal market, it should not create new avenues for the illegal distribution of music. Music downloaded in China for free should not reach the other markets and it is still a question that how Google is going to take care of these issues.
