Google sells stake in Baidu.com; Baidu shares drop

Google Inc. said it has sold its stake in Chinese rival Baidu.com. Google registered to sell all of the 749,625 shares of Beijing-based Baidu.com Inc. it owns, according to a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filer of such a document is permitted to sell the shares within 90 days after the registration.

Google bought about 2.6 percent of Baidu.com's outstanding Class A ordinary shares for about $5 million (euro4 million) before the Chinese search engine's initial public offering last year.

The shares are valued at more than $60 million (euro48 million), based on Baidu.com's current stock price.

Baidu.com, often called the "Chinese Google,'' went public last August.

Its American depositary shares hit a high of $151.31 on their first day of trading, up from the IPO price of $27 each.

The shares fell to a low of $44.44 each on Feb. 6.

Baidu's shares fell $4.20, or 5 percent, to close at $80.20 Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Volume of about 3.4 million shares was well above the daily average of 2.2 million. Google's shares fell $2.18 to close at $399.95 Thursday on the NYSE.