Two of China’s most successful internet firms have announced that they will cooperate in making their services work closer together. Sina and Baidu have announced that they will be increasing the interoperability of their respective platforms.
Baidu, the search giant sometimes known as China’s answer to Google, is to incorporate a preinstalled Weibu app in an upcoming mobile cloud product. Sina will be including a Baidu powered search function in their Weibu app for smart phones. Weibu is an increasingly important micro-blogging website. Often compared to Twitter, it boasts over 300 million Chinese users.
Market watchers have called this a coup for Baidu, who may stand to benefit by indexing Weibu posts for search results outside the Weibu app.
Baidu and Sina both became successful as web operators andboth are turning to mobile phones for further online growth. Sina announced in May that their mobile users of Weibu exceeded desktop users.
Baidu entered China’s affordable smart phone market with a branded handset earlier this year.
