Why Baidu Stock Jumped Today

Big news for EV maker (NASDAQ: TSLA) today -- the company just took a big leap forward with its plans to offer full self-driving features for its electric vehicles sold in China. That is, it announced it's officially partnering with China's search engine giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), which will be providing the digital maps required by Tesla's autonomous driving technology. Tesla shares jumped nearly 15% on the report, which is expected to make its cars even more marketable in that large market.

But the development also is being viewed as a victory for Baidu itself, sending shares of the so-called Google of China 5.7% higher at market close Tuesday on the news.

It's called the Google of China for good reason. Baidu control's roughly two-thirds of China's web search engine market, according to GlobalStats' StatCounter, but also offers cloud computing services, manages an online streaming video platform called iQIYI, and perhaps most notably has been working on its own autonomous driving tech for several years. Integrating this work with Tesla's hardware shouldn't prove complicated, particularly given that it's already been working with the electric vehicle outfit for some time.

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Source Fool.com