'Chinese Google' to float

Baidu.com goes public

China's largest search engine, Baidu.com, is to make its debut on the stock market this morning.

The Chinese-language search engine, which claims to be the world's sixth most visited site, is making 3.7 million shares available on the Nasdaq.

As well as its generous market share in potentially the biggest online country in the world, Baidu has also been attracting interest due to speculation it may be an acquisition target for Google, which already owns more than two per cent of the company.

The income from Baidu's IPO is expected to be up to $88m and will be spent on gaining new users and improving the site.