Further expanding its business in the Asian market, China’s search giant Baidu has opened a new research lab in Singapore, for developing technologies that allow users to conduct searches in Southeast Asian languages.
The company has joined hands with Singapore’s R&D agency, A*STAR, to set up this lab, reports the Channelnewsasia.com. The search engine which is currently available in China will soon be accessible to the users of other Asian languages such as Thai and Vietnamese.
“From a demand perspective, there are many Internet products available in Southeast Asia that are from global brands like Google and Yahoo. But, products customized to the unique needs of the local users are not many. And the search engines in these countries do not fully satisfy the needs of users, so we think therein lie the opportunities for Baidu,” Wang Mengqiu, vice president of engineering, Baidu, added.
The new lab named Baidu-I2R Research Centre, will be operational by June with 20 researchers. Users will be able to do searches in Thai and Vietnamese by mid 2013.
Baidu and A*STAR have declined to provide exact figures of their investments in the project, but added that it would be a 50-50 joint venture and would involve sharing of the patents of products produced at the lab.
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