Amazon partners with China’s Baidu

E-commerce giant Amazon has merged with Baidu, China’s biggest search engine. Baidu agreed to become the default search engine for Amazon’s Kindle and Fire platforms operating in China effective Thursday.

Baidu captures around 71 percent of the Chinese Internet market, becoming the best and most used search engine in the nation. It is among the “big three” tech companies of China, with TenCent and Alibaba being the other two.

Baidu recently partnered with insurance company Allianz to launch its online insurance platform in China, making its partnership with Amazon its second major venture with a foreign organisation. Meanwhile Amazon is all set to enter into the video streaming sector to overtake Netflix, and has reportedly signed an agreement with the former host of “Top Gear,” British presenter Jeremy Clarkson, to develop a new car show.

Baidu and Amazon’s tussle with tech giant Alibaba is yet another reason behind their merger. According to Business Insider, Baidu previously merged with other Chinese companies to launch its e-commerce venture, Wanda, which has become the main cause of rivalry between the search engine and Alibaba. The Chinese online marketplace has listed Amazon in the U.S., which now targets to generate 50 percent of its revenue outside of China.

Recently, Amazon advanced its Fire tablet feature by introducing the “Blue Shade” feature which helps users read at night. The new feature helps turn down the sleep-disrupting blue light on its tablets. Amazon’s Kindle e-reader does not emit blue light.

Amazon is also planning to bring a kid-friendly browser to make accessing Fire tablets easier for children. This browser will include parental control tools which would allow kids to select only pre-approved programs.

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