On Monday, for the first time, the share price of the Chinese search engine Baidu eclipsed the share price of its competitor, the Internet behemoth Google.

Analysts attributed the 7 percent price jump of Baidu ($593) versus the 4 percent drop of Google ($556) in early trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange to increased fears that Google may shut down its Chinese-language website and leave Baidu without competition in the largest Internet domain in world.