Google gained mkt share in China in last six months

BOSTAN, USA: Google has been closing the gap on Chinese search engine leader Baidu over the last six months according to web analytics company StatCounter.

Bing overtakes Yahoo!: StatCounter

The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that at the end of 2009 Baidu held 56 percent of the Chinese market compared to Google's 43 percent.

"Google has made impressive gains in China since July last when it was at 30 percent compared to Baidu's 68 percent," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

Microsofts IE slips further as Firefox gains

"Our analysis suggests that given Google's recent strong performance, market share is certainly not the reason behind its threat to leave China at this time."

At the end of 2009 Yahoo! and Bing's combined share of the Chinese search market stood at just 1.18 percent.

Despite significant gains in China in the last six months, Google's market share there still lags its global penetration where it has over 90 percent of the market.

The analysis is based on 24 million search engine referring clicks from China which were collected between July and December 2009.