BEIJING (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the most-used Internet-search engine, plans to give more autonomy to the Chinese unit that is trying to catch up with Baidu.com Inc. in the world's second-largest Internet market.

“In the last four months, we had more growth than in the preceding two years in China,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said at a briefing in Beijing, without giving numbers. “One of the big projects this year is to push more and more autonomy and decision-making back” to Google's China President Lee Kai-fu, Schmidt said.

Google has less than a third of Baidu.com's market share in China, home to 137 million Web users at the end of 2006. Mountain View, California-based Google has formed partnerships with telecom companies led by China Mobile Ltd. to win users. Online ad sales in China may surge more than sevenfold to $3.1 billion in 2011 from $420 million in 2005, Credit Suisse Group estimates. “We were late into the China market and we are catching up,” Schmidt said. “Our investment is working and we will eventually be the market leader.”

Baidu had 57 percent of China's search market at March 31, compared with Google's 18.7 percent and Yahoo! Inc.'s 13.6 percent, according to Beijing-based researcher Analysis International.

Google hired Taiwan-born Lee in July 2005 from Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker and a rival to Google in internet searches. Google overcame a legal challenge from Microsoft to retain Lee.

The China unit is working on social-networking and entertainment products to be adapted for the local market, Lee said. Google's first-quarter profit rose 69 percent to one billion dollar as the company pulled further ahead of Yahoo! Inc. in the online advertising market and expanded outside the U.S.