Baidu, the search engine known as “China’s Google” has launched a Portuguese-language version on the Brazilian market (http://br.hao123.com/) of Hao123, a directory of links that also allows Internet content searches.

At the beginning of the year the company said it would open an office in Sao Paulo and that Hao123 would be the company’s first project in Brazil and the first of the company’s products to be localised in Portuguese.

Baidu recently opened a research centre in Singapore where it translates its services into Portuguese, Arab, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Hao123 has a Google search box as the Chinese services, which owns the Internet tool, has yet to be optimised for Portuguese.

In China Baidu accounts for 80 percent of Internet search traffic, and the company announced turnover of US$859 million in the second quarter of this year. (macauhub)