Baidu, Microsoft will provide English-language search service

BEIJING - Google Inc may face a new challenge in China as Microsoft Corp, its main rival in the United States, and Baidu Inc, China's biggest search engine, are joining forces against it in the world's largest Internet market.

Microsoft will provide English-language results from its Bing search engine on Baidu "within this year", the two companies said in a news release on Monday.

The announcement comes at a time that Google's market share in China is falling and Baidu is trying turn that to its advantage to dominate the country's search market.