The head of China's dominant Internet search engine said Monday that Google's retreat from the mainland was a predictable gift that came as no surprise to him.

Baidu chairman Robin Li said that when Google first launched its search service in China, his advice was that chief Eric Schmidt spend at least six months a year in that country to understand the market.

"Apparently, Eric did not take my advice," Li said during an unprecedented on-stage chat at a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. "I knew that, eventually, he would hand me a gift and it happened."

Schmidt had his turn on the Summit stage earlier in the day, but did not discuss Baidu.

Baidu reported in October that its net profit more than doubled in the third quarter, as rival Google continued to lose market share following its public spat with Beijing over censorship.

Baidu has increased its dominance of the world's biggest online market at the expense of Google, which has seen its share dwindle throughout the year.

Baidu said its net profit soared 112.4 percent year-on-year to 1.05 billion yuan (157.89 million dollars) in the third quarter.

Total revenue ballooned to 2.26 billion yuan, up 76.4 percent from the same period last year, the company said.

China has 420 million web users, with 99 percent of them using Baidu, Li said.

Baidu's share of the Chinese search engine market increased to 73 percent in the third quarter from 70 percent in the second quarter, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.

Over the same period, Google's share shrank to 21.6 percent from 24.2 percent, Analysys said.

The US Internet titan had boasted a 31 percent share in the first three months of the year, before its protracted tussle with the Chinese authorities.

In March, Google said it would no longer bow to government censors and effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, automatically re-routing mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.

The web giant has since tweaked the way it re-routes users in order to renew its business license in China, creating a new landing page with a link to the Hong Kong site, which users must click on themselves.

Li's comments came during his first-ever appearance at a technology industry conference in the United States.

He rejected suggestions that Baidu is succeeding because it is "the only game in town" or is a favored son of the China government.

"We did try harder," Li said of Baidu. "Over the past ten years we did nothing but Chinese search; we came up with innovative ideas."

Li left a job as an engineer at pioneering US Internet search firm Infoseek to move back to China and start Baidu.

"China is a very different market," Li said. "Market conditions change every day. If you are not close, it is difficult for you to keep up."

Venture capital for startups has been abundant in China, and bright Chinese engineers from the United States have returned to ply their skills in their homeland, according to Li.

He said that, like Google, he once considered moving Baidu to Hong Kong out of frustration with Internet censorship by Chinese officials.

"After careful thought I realized that if I moved to Hong Kong I would have been called an anti-government person so my life would be ruined," Li said.

"If an American company decided to defy Chinese law they would still call them a strategic partner. I don't have a choice."

He suggested that Internet firms should worry about what they can control in China and work with the things they can't alter, such as sluggish connection speeds, censorship, and bureaucracy.

"You need to be a little bit patient," Li said. "Don't complain. Find a way around the problem."

Baidu has ambition to expand to add more languages and enter new markets, but the US is not in its crosshairs yet, according to Li. Baidu has been in Japan for two years.