Google is planning to more than double the number of its engineers in China. This move is seen as part of the efforts by the world's most-used Internet search site to vie for a large share in China's Internet market with the dominant Chinese Internet search engine Baidu.com.

Google aims to have 200 -- 300 engineers in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai in a year's time, Google China's president, Lee Kai-fu, said after a press briefing Friday in Beijing. With more than 100 engineers in mainland China, Google plans to hire "thousands of people" for its Beijing development center to create services for the more than 140 million Internet users in China, the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States.

Google added online map and Internet spreadsheet services last month in a bid to catch Beijing's Baidu.com, which has a China market share three times larger than Google's. Google is already hiring people away from Baidu and is after people who are highly coveted not only by Baidu, but by Microsoft other companies. The search company is planning to open a development center in Shanghai this summer, Google China's President Lee said.

Google began offering a service last Friday that allows users to search for information in Chinese-language books. The company began offering search services for mobile phones last December in partnership with China Mobile, the nation's biggest wireless operator. In January, Google bought a stake in Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology, a Chinese company that helps users download movies, music and software from the Internet.

Google is fighting to narrow the gap between its market share  and the market leader Baidu's in China. In the fourth quarter, Google's share of the Chinese search market rose to 17 percent from 16 percent in the previous three-month period. Baidu's share rose to 58 percent from 57 percent, while Yahoo!'s was unchanged at 13 percent. Baidu's search revenue could grow 15 percent on a quarterly basis during 2007, slower than Google's rate in China of between 20 percent and 25 percent.