Report: Google to announce stake in Chinese website

Google plans to announce an investment in Xunlei Networking Technology, a Chinese peer-to-peer file sharing website, reports the China Daily.

The deal is to be announced today (Friday), says the newspaper, quoting a Xunlei executive. Google executives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Google is struggling to succeed in China, where the company has steadily lost ground to local rival Baidu.com. Buying a stake in Xunlei, which gets 50 million visitors to its website every day, according to China Daily, could help Google regain some ground in China.

Last week, Google announced a deal with China's largest mobile operator, China Mobile Communications, that makes the US company the search engine on China Mobile's WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) portal site. Chinese mobile operators tightly restrict the content that subscribers can access, and this deal could give Google a jump on demand for mobile search applications.

However, China Mobile does not offer 3G (third-generation) mobile services, which means subscribers can only access the WAP portal over its slower GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network.