If you are ever in doubt of the competitiveness of Baidu against Google, note that Bloomberg.com has information on the growing profits of Baidu:

China’s most-used Internet search engine, posted an 87 percent jump in second- quarter profit, beating analysts’ estimates and sending the shares up 13 percent.

The hidden gem from the article though is the fact that Baidu’s search market share continues to grow despite the international heavy weight of Google:

Baidu’s share of the Chinese Internet search market rose to 64.4 percent in the second quarter from 58 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Analysys International. Google’s share rose to 26.1 percent from 23 percent while Yahoo! Inc.’s fell to 5.5 percent from 11.6 percent, the Beijing-based researcher said.

They recommended buying stock, go figure.