As the business looks to new areas such as driverless cars and finance, Baidu – often dubbed the Google of China – will eventually expand into the U.S. and Europe.

The chief executive of the Chinese search giant announced recently. Expansion was definitely on the cards, said Baidu CEO Robin Li while speaking at the Viva Technology conference in Paris.

“I think eventually we will go into Europe, U.S. and then many other places. We are in a number of countries, but we need to find a new battleground. Search is maturing, and mobile is very different from desktop. We need to find ways to access this kind of new market,” Li said during an on-stage interview.

A search engine service on mobile and desktop are operated by Baidu in China. 90 percent of its revenues come from advertising as it dominates the search market in China. Emerging markets, where the growth of mobile is exploding and internet connections are slowly improving has been the focus so far for Baidu’s international expansion efforts. Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand have presence of Baidu. Japan which is a more advanced mobile market, also has a strong presence of the search engine.

Launching of local-language versions of its search engine has been the focus of Baidu in each market. The company has also looked to expand its footprint through other services. Baidu has its own Android app store called MoboMarket in Indonesia.

However, dominated by U.S. search giant Google, Europe and the U.S. are two completely different beasts for Baidu. Given the prevalence of Google, particularly on mobile where its Android operating system is the dominant OS in both U.S. and Europe, getting a foothold in these markets will be difficult.

Different regulation, which at times has been unfavorable to Chinese companies, particularly in the U.S. is another problem that Baidu will have to deal with.

Baidu could use its investments in U.S. firms such as Uber to get a foothold in certain markets.

The U.S. E-commerce giant Alibaba for example hired country managers in Italy and the U.K. last year and is an example of other Chinese internet behemoths who have already started to expand into Europe. And to allow Chinese tourists abroad to use the app to pay for items, its payment service Alipay, has been building partnerships with European companies.

Something Li said the company could expand on is a mapping service of Baidu which currently will help Chinese tourists find local hotels or restaurants wherever they are.

“We will start from here and we will gradually expand into other areas,” Li said.

But would the search still be relevant?

Questioning how relevant it will remain in the face of challenges from the likes of Facebook, the Baidu CEO also spoke about the broader search market.

“We face a new problem. Will search still be relevant? Going forward people can directly go to WeChat, go to Facebook….go to a lot of different apps. Do they still need search? And we need to worry about this problem. We need to address this kind of new consumer behavior, we need to keep innovating, we need to come up with better solutions for our users,” Li said.

“There are a lot more opportunities…I think people will still rely on search for a lot of things, information…but we can actually do a lot more,” Li said.

(Adapted by CNBC)