Baidu.com's chief operating officer, Ye Peng, is leaving the Chinese online search engine company, effective today.

In a terse company statement issued a few hours ago, the COO's departure is attributed to personal reasons and "is effective as of the date of this announcement." No replacement for Ye is mentioned within the company announcement.

The company also stated that Shen Haoyu, vice president of business operations, has been promoted to senior vice president; and Wang Zhan, senior director of business products, has been promoted to vice president.

Baidu announced plans earlier this week to establish a new independent company to provide licensed online video to Chinese Internet users. The new company will work closely with content providers to provide copyrighted premium video content including movies, TV series, sporting events, animation and other varied content to Internet users through an advertising supported model. Yu Gong, formerly president and chief operating officer of China Mobile's 12580 business, has been appointed chief executive officer of the new company.