Baidu.com has teamed up with Huawei Technologies and Intel to strengthen its servers and search technologies to expand its lead in the domestic market over rivals including Google, Nasdaq-listed Baidu said yesterday.

Baidu announced it will build a joint lab with Huawei to explore "next-generation" online search and test 3G-related mobile phone services, just one month after Google launched mobile search services in China.

"Baidu has to break the bottleneck of the server capacity as the demand for search surges in China," William Chang, Baidu's chief scientist, said. "Baidu has to triple its existing capacity to reach the global level of services."

In the third quarter, China overtook the United States to become the world's largest search traffic, with 10 billion hits per month, Baidu said.

Baidu has launched a series of new services, such as an Olympics channel, game channel, Baidu TV and online music streaming (partnered with Rock Music Group).

"These new initiatives may enrich Baidu's content and boost traffic, hence attracting more premium advertisers," Morgan Stanley said in a note.

Last week, Baidu reached an agreement with Intel on a joint lab, which focuses on environmentally friendly technologies for Internet searches.

After adopting Intel's new server and a solution based on visualization, Baidu will be able to save 35 million kilowatts of electricity in the coming year, which will save up to 20,000 tons of coal, 140 million liters of water and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 35,000 tons.

China's adoption rate of virtualization, which helps firms to save on server budgets and improve power and water efficiency, is predicted to soar within the next two or three years. Initially companies with more than 100 servers like banks and Websites will adopt it, according to Vicki Cui, research manager of IDC China.

In the third quarter, Baidu's market share on revenue was 60.8 percent of the Chinese search market, followed by Google's 23.8 percent.

(Shanghai Daily December 18, 2007)