Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. Ltd., owner of short video app TikTok, has fully acquired online encyclopedia service Baike.com, KrASIA reported, citing Chinese media.
ByteDance first acquired a 22.22% stake in the Wikipedia-like service in early August, then proceeded to purchase the remaining 77.78% stake it does not own in Baike.com in late August. Financial details of the transactions were not disclosed.
The acquisition of Baike.com is instrumental to ByteDance's plan to compete with Baidu Inc., the dominant search engine in China, the report said. The deal comes less than a month after ByteDance rolled out a search engine in China in compliance with the country's strict censorship rules.
