According to reports in various Chinese local media, Taobao.com, the Internet shopping subsidiary of the Chinese business-to-business e-commerce group Alibaba, will develop an independent search engine product.

An insider from the website revealed that the company will launch the search engine under the domain name of search.taobao.com. The product is currently undergoing an alpha test and it is only available to Taobao.com's employees at the moment. It is expected to open to the public before the end of this year.

So far, this search engine only includes information from Taobao.com. However, the insider said that the company will continue to improve the database and search functions of this new product.