Leading Chinese search engine, Baidu.com, has upgraded and expanded its online dictionary and translation service. The improved service, which was originally set up in 2004, was launched earlier this month, provides a far more extensive facility than other free, online services offer. Most other dictionary sites only have the capacity to support up to 150 characters at a time, whereas Baidu’s site can now support up to 1,000 Chinese characters at a time. The upgraded service offers translation from English to Chinese and vice versa.

Baidu.com currently holds a 69% share of the Chinese search engine market, far outdoing western competitors trying to acquire a stake in the Chinese market. Google, for example, holds only a 12.5% market share, according to a recent report by DCCI, Data Center of China Internet.

Co-founders, Robin Li and Eric Xu, established Beijing based, Baidu.com, in 2000; it now has offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Baidu.com not only operates the search engine, but it also provides an online business platform which operates on an auction-based P4P, Pay for Performance, basis. Baidu, which is traded on NASDAQ, has a very well established user-base and will probably manage to fight off any future competition from foreign players on the Chinese internet as it has the advantage of being a local company; consequently, it is in touch with the needs and tastes of the Chinese surfer.