Baidu, the China search giant has officially launched its instant messenger (IM) page. Its foray into the IM market has been a big win. They got a huge publicity on the China Web market, as I observed most of the major online news providers, blogs, most of them are reporting about their latest IM move. In the beginning of the month, I did posted a brief introduction on Baidu IM, now I knew that China users can download the IM software by visiting this page.

Baidu, now not only compete directly with QQ, the most popular IM software in China, it also clear that they’re attempting to offer a full range of Web products to the China users. What will be their next move, Baidu Mail, or Baidu English version of search engine?

Baidu, the China search giant has officially unveiled its instant messenger product, codenamed as Baidu Hi. Currently, it is in the private beta mode, hence not everyone get the chance to test this product. While I trying to access to the Baidu Hi page, the landing page is still not available. There are few information that I found after reading some other Chinese blogs’ about this Baidu Hi.

1) Baidu Hi is developed by using Visual C++, an IDE of Microsoft.

2) The user interface is a Flash made.

3) Baidu Hi may not support Windows 95, 98, or 2000, the Baidu Hi first release will only support Windows XP SP2.

Baidu, the No.1 search engine in the Chinese market will release its own instant messenger (IM) software. At the moment, the baidu.im was redirect to Google home page, and I wonder what will be the subdomain of Baidu going to use for this new IM software. From the recent buzz on the Web, Baidu will release this IM software together with its email application as their major product plan of this 2007. In particular, Baidu IM can be download as a client version, its size of beta release is about 4MB, features such as voicemail, online chat are available in this client.

Though QQ IM services is well-known in the China market, that hasn’t stopped Baidu from offering its own “IM” services. But I think it will be an interested application for the Chinese people in China, Baidu brand name is there, and search engine, email system, and this IM are the products that China people want. If Baidu bundle these IM and email application with their search engine, they will build a solid empire in a long, long time. Then, we should forget about Google and Yahoo! in China.

I will report back on this Baidu IM when it officially launched in the market. Stay tuned.