According to an agreement, the investment allows Baidu to own an 8.3 per cent stake in online video platform UiTV, which will in turn operate Baidu Internet TV Channel on its movie.baidu.com URL.
Baidu’s channel will allow users to download movies and television shows authorised by copyright holders including TVB and Enlight.
Baidu said the channel would be unlike its video search platform, video.baidu.com.
The announcement comes just weeks after the site began closed beta tests of an e-commerce site it hopes will rival sector leader Alibaba, and months after it launched an instant messaging platform to go up against Tencent’s popular QQ Messenger.
Sources from China say that Baidu’s ambitions to extend beyond its search-engine niche, where it holds more than 55 per cent market share, has spurred a backlash from competitors, which include Alibaba and social networking sites blocking Baidu from crawling its pages.
The launch of Baidu’s internet TV channel also pits the company against popular video sites Tudou.com and Youku.com, which are both struggling to turn a profit in the nascent online video-sharing industry.
