This week, for example, Lee reaffirmed the search giant's naked ambition at the Boao Forum for Asia. "Certainly, we would like
to aspire to be a market leader in five years," Lee said.
And a look into the latest stats (from Beijing research firm Analysys International) shows that Google's share of search
revenue in China was up to 26% in the fourth quarter of '07--nearly 10 percentage points higher than the previous year. In contrast, Baidu's year-over-year share only grew by 2 percentage points, to
60%.
Still, Lee acknowledged that Google faces an uphill battle. "Gaining share against a well-established, supermajority competitor is a difficult proposition because there is a certain critical mass, economy of scale and word-of-mouth effect that one has to overcome," he said.