Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) should not be pleased at all that growth in mainland China keeps ratcheting lower to a new base. But on a day that might have been a disappointment, it turns out that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is losing the head of its mainland China unit. Reports Monday morning indicate that John Liu will resign from his position in the middle of August. Baidu has to be happy as well that the company’s European partnerships head, Scott Beaumont, will assume Liu’s responsibilities.

Google reportedly has lost what it was trying to gain in the Chinese market, and its services reportedly have been slow and less accurate in search than Baidu since moving to Hong Kong. It also is a win for Baidu that Liu’s resignation is reportedly to go pursue other opportunities.

The main focus going forward for Google is to focus on advertising opportunities for Chinese companies looking for a foreign audience. That implies that the resumption of a “taking Baidu’s search dominance” is not in the works, therefore another plus for Baidu here.

The only issue we would bring up by way of cautioning against being too bullish on Baidu today is that most of us thought that Google’s China business was all but dead in search and relegated solely to getting Chinese advertisers for the rest of the world and for companies who want to advertise locally in China on major websites.

Baidu shares are up 3.1% at $99.85, against a 52-week range of $82.98 to $134.71, while Google shares are down less than 0.1% at $922.60, against a 52-week range of $568.40 to $926.47. What may be great news for Baidu is just another day at the office under the current state of Google.

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