All About Baidu
The Baidu search engine is based in Beijing and has a huge presence in the Middle East. It was established in 2000, being incorporated in the Cayman Islands and now has grown to around 700 employees. Recent results have shown that Baidu currently tops China's list of Search Engines with a share of 43.9% in the first quarter of 2006. It is also now the forth largest website in the world and has an index of around 700 million pages.
The name 'Baidu' means a 'hundred times'. It comes from an ancient poem and was chosen to help the world remember its Chinese heritage. Baidu's challenge of applying avant-garde technology to the world's most ancient and complex language fuels their business development intensions.
As well as its text and image search, the Multimedia search facility of Baidu has an overwhelming popularity in China. This is called MP3 search and locates file formats such as MP3 and WMA. It is used mainly to search Chinese pop music.
Other Baidu services include:
- Baidu Zhidao - Q&A service
- Baidu Baike - Encyclopedia service
- Baidu Post - A keyword orientated discussion group. Users are taken to discussion groups of relevance on entering keywords.
In addition to the above services, Baidu also provides online marketing services. With Baidu, customers can access some of the world's largest online audiences and target specific groups and interests of people. The marketing products are performance-based unlike some traditional online advertising services which charge a flat fee.
Google, Baidu and China
Google bought its share of Baidu in 2004 for around $5m which it has now sold for over $60m.
Baidu listed on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2005 opening with $27 per-share. It is now trading at around $80.
At the beginning of this month there were rumours about Google pulling their Google China site. These rumours were fuelled by criticism of Google.cn for abiding with the Chinese government censorship rules. Google's spokespeople however always defended their commitment to the Chinese market. Now with Google's selling of Baidu we have been given hints that their intentions are indeed to expand their own brands services in the Middle East as well as North Africa.
So, what kind of presence do Google want to attain in these countries? Is there something big planned? There is a certain amount of speculation with this one, but as always, one thing is for sure...
We all know, and I'll always say: Google love to keep us guessing!
