Alibaba has launched a new search engine called eTao, as China’s largest e-commerce company looks to take on Baidu in the search market.
Alibaba has launched its search engine called eTao.com after a beta trial last year.
Alibaba’s eTao site has been designed primarily as a shopping search engine, allowing users to query for products and group-buying deals. But the site also allows users to search for general web pages as well. eTao’s market share, however, is so small that research firms don’t list it.
This put the company in competition with Baidu, which dominates China’s search engine market with an 80 percent user market share, according to CNZZ.com, an Internet analytics web site.
Alibaba’s eTao site launched months after Google decided to shut down its search engine for mainland China last year, a move that allowed Baidu to expand its market share to the point it has a near monopoly.