Baidu is testing new search engines for users outside China that will target markets in Brazil, Egypt and Thailand to start with. The search pages for the three markets have appeared online, although Baidu has not formally launched the services yet. “It’s still in internal testing,” said company spokesman Kaiser Kuo on Monday.
Chinese search giant Baidu is making moves to challenge Google in several countries as its search engine in Thailand, Brazil and Egypt went live for a short while as part of internal testing, as spotted by Tech in Asia. It isn’t clear when they will officially (and permanently) go live, as a Baidu spokesperson declined to provide official dates for when they are launching localized search engines in any of those markets. Baidu’s latest move isn’t its first to make its presence felt in countries beyond China, where it is the dominant search engine — as it already has a localized search engine in Japan – but this signals a renewed push to challenge Google.