bill - 12:54 am on Jul 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

Baidu is going local in Asia.

Baidu opens its Singapore research centre, sharpening its focus on Southeast Asia [thenextweb.com] Initially announced in February, Baidu launched the Baidu-I2R Research Centre (BIRC) to develop technologies and information that will regionalise its Web products for Southeast Asia, which is sure to include its flagship search engine. Today, it has officially opened the center alongside joint partner the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), a research arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), which will use the premises to carry a range of language and speech-related research. More specifically, Baidu explains that it has developed a plan for the BIRC which will see it focus on Southeast Asian language resources, natural language processing, information retrieval and information extraction, and speech information processing. These technologies, it says, will “enhance its products and services in Southeast Asia”.