Alibaba to Launch Search Engine in Beijing

HANGZHOU, Aug 07, 2009 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) Alibaba.com Limited (SEHK: 1688), a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace operator in China, is researching its search engine in Beijing, an insider from the Hangzhou-headquartered e-commerce firm disclosed on August 6, 2009.

According to news the search engine by Alibaba, will focus on B2B and business-to-customer (B2C) search and will not compete head on head with Baidu, Inc. or Google Inc.

In the beginning of this July 2009, Alibaba was rumored to launch its search engine. It was because of the company's relationship with Baidu, guessed industry watchers.

Alibaba gave a shining performance in 2008, as small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) flocked to e-commerce amid the industry recession. Its net profits soared 95% from the previous year to CNY 1.205 billion. Total revenue rose 39% year on year to CNY 3.001 billion. Notably, revenues from its domestic platform amounted to CNY 1.094 billion, hiking 78% year on year.