A recent report by the Wall Street Journal says that Google is continuing with its efforts to gain more market share in the massive Chinese online sector by planning a joint venture with a locally based online music company that would enable them to provide free (and licensed) music downloads within China.

This move is the result of the market leader in Chinese search - Baidu - building and maintaining its dominating of the market, in part, due to a controversial and potentially illegal offering of searches for free, unlicensed music downloads. Google's new service is intended to counter this advantage and could start in several weeks according to the article.

China is one of the few countries where Google doesn't claim market leadership and, what's more, Baidu is expected to surpass Google's figures for overall numbers of worldwide users this year, such is the size of the emerging Chinese internet market. Baidu has used its advantage of being a 'homegrown' service and has also gained share of the market through its knowledge of China and the Chinese language.