Baidu, China’s largest search engine company by market share, has signed a deal with Skyscanner, the UK-based flight search company, as it seeks to rival Googlein providing travel information to internet users.
People looking for international flights on the Baidu search engine will be presented with results pulled from Skyscanner’s database of more than 750m air fares from in excess of 900 airlines.
Travel information has become a key focus for Google, which presents its own tables of flight information prominently in its search results. Two years ago bought ITA Software, whose technology is used to find flight information and prices. The deal caused concern among online travel companies that Google would use ITA’s data to dominate the online flight search market.