China's Baidu to invest $1.6 billion to set up cloud computing centre

Robin Li, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Chinese search engine Baidu, arrives to speak at the Baidu technology innovation conference in Beijing September 3, 2012.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's largest search engine Baidu Inc will invest more than 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) to set up its cloud computing centre, Baidu's chief financial officer Jennifer Li said on Monday.

Baidu, which unveiled its mobile Internet browser at its annual conference in Beijing, is pushing deep into cloud computing as the heart of its mobile strategy in order to capitalise on the booming sector.

Cloud computing is a term used to describe data storage and processing done on the Web.

(Reporting by Terril Jones; Writing by Melanie Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada)