Google has sold its roughly 2 percent stake in rival Baidu.com the market leader in China's Internet Web search market.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—Google Inc. has sold its roughly 2 percent stake in rival Baidu.com Inc. on May 25, the market leader in China's Internet Web search market, according to a U.S. regulatory filing released late on Wednesday.
A form 144 insider stock sale registration was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Google detailing the sale of 749,625 Baidu Class A ordinary shares.
As a pre-IPO insider, Google was restricted initially from selling its holdings in Baidu following its high-flying initial public offering on August 5, 2005.
"We have disposed of our modest investment in Baidu," Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost confirmed. "It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that," she said in an e-mailed statement.
Shares of Baidu were off 5.3 percent, or $4.51 at $79.89 in mid-session Nasdaq trading. Google's stock traded down $2.31 to $399.82, a decline of around half a percentage point.
Google's stake was worth $63 million on May 25, the date of the sale, according to the U.S. regulatory filing.
Google, which acquired its stake in Baidu in June 2004 for $5 million, was once considered a potential acquirer of Baidu. At the time of the August 2005 IPO, Google's stake represented about 2.6 percent of Baidu shares.
But Google, a distant No. 2 in the Chinese Web search market, has subsequently moved to establish operations in China and competes ferociously with Baidu in the world's most populous market. Baidu commands the same dominant position in China that Google does in most other countries.
