Baidu.com Inc., China's leading Internet search engine, has launched its own online shopping website and aimed to make it the largest of its kind in the country within three years.

The website youa.baidu.com recorded more than four million page views, while 1.99 million items of goods went on sale on it on Tuesday, when the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) website was launched, the company said on Thursday.

Baidu said the website "would" replace Taobao, who held an 85 percent share of the C2C market, to become the country's largest online retail platform within three years.

An officer of Alibaba, which set up Taobao in 2003, said they welcomed competition when asked for comments on the move of Baidu. However, Taobao blocked the search engine last month.

Taobao pursued free services since it was established in 2003 and in 2005 it promised another three-years of free services. The strategy helped it beat eBay to become the nation's largest online auction site.

Nasdaq-listed Baidu is often referred to as China's version of Google because of the Chinese-language search engine's soaring popularity and profits.

The company's net profit for 2007 rose 108 percent to 629 million yuan (92.1 million U.S. dollars) while revenues rose 110 percent to 1.74 billion yuan. Enditem

(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2008)