Posts Tagged ‘Baidu’
Baidu + Microsoft = English search in China
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
China’s Baidu is to partner with Microsoft for English-language search, giving the U.S. software giant a chance to expand its tiny Web presence in a market Google has stepped back from, and helping the Chinese company’s international ambitions.
The tie-up will direct English searches from Baidu to Microsoft’s Bing, which will deliver the results back to Baidu’s Web pages…
Baidu has about 80 percent of the search market in China — a nation with almost half a billion Internet users and still only about 30 percent penetration — after Google left mainland China in a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.
Bing — which filters out results in China relating to controversial subjects, such as political dissidents, Taiwan or pornography, to be able to operate in the country — has a negligible share of the market, while Google has nearly 20 percent counting visits to its offshore sites…
The new tie-up, due to be launched later this year, builds on existing cooperation between Baidu and Bing on mobile platforms and page results.
Bing is one of the few software packages that Microsoft hasn’t managed to screw-up with complexity. The usual outcome for their products that just work well – and need little touching up over time – is that they get bored with it and drop it. Microsoft MONEY being the best example of that practice.
Though I don’t use it on a regular basis, Bing seems to work well – in most cases as well as Google. Habits are hard to break though and I know most of the quirks of Google. Plus – their gmail still does the best job around of defeating spam and phishing.
Frankly, I think this is another smart move by Baidu, another example of a lost opportunity by Yahoo who once were in on the ground floor.
Clarification: I own enough Baidu shares to buy half a Yaris.
Is Facebook preparing to tunnel through the Great Firewall?
“It was just two nerds comparing notes,” the spokesman said. “Keep the speculation in check.”
But when those nerds happened to be the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Robin Li, the head of Baidu – the biggest search engine in China – there was no way a quiet business lunch was going to remain quiet.
Moments after Zuckerberg and Li were seen strolling through the canteen in Baidu’s Beijing headquarters today, an employee posted a blurred mobile phone photograph of them on his microblog…
Zuckerberg – recently named person of the year by Time Magazine – has made no secret of his desire to expand in China, where Facebook has been blocked by the government censors’ Great Firewall since 2008…
Zuckerberg’s current holiday is his first known trip behind the Great Firewall. But he has started taking Mandarin lessons, and recently asked Facebook members for tips on places to visit with his girlfriend, Priscilla Chan.
In a recent speech at Stanford University, he said the company may turn its attention to China in a year if it can first crack Japan, South Korea and Russia.
“How can you connect the whole world if you leave out a billion people?” he asked then…
Zuckerberg appears to have found common ground with Li, an internet entrepreneur who has completed a postgraduate course in the US.
Since then, he has shrugged off Google and Yahoo, as well as criticism about a supposedly weak stance on censorship and copyright piracy, to make Baidu the dominant force in the Chinese search engine market…
Commerce can do more to bring reluctant democracies forward into the modern world than any prating about the holiness and destiny of democracy. Instead of spending time lecturing each other on politics and history, methods and practice – learn how to profit and grow together.
Building democracy together, finding trust together, gets easier after that.
Leave the purity of your bodily fluids for priests, pundits and politicians.
Unlike most of my disclaimers, I actually own a boatload of Baidu. Only because I bought a wee bit when it was much cheaper – and before they had their 10:1 stock split.
Google and China work out Good Enough solution
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Google said China has given it permission to continue operating its Chinese search page, resolving a censorship dispute that had threatened Google’s future in the world’s biggest Internet market.
The news sent Google shares up 2 percent as it eased immediate concerns that Beijing would kick the company out for taking a hard stance against Web censorship…
Google had embarrassed China in January by drawing global attention to Beijing’s Web censorship practices and by accusing hackers in the country of launching a sophisticated cyber attack on Google and other major U.S. companies…
Last week, Google offered Beijing a face-saving compromise: it stopped automatically rerouting the google.cn page to an uncensored Hong Kong-based search page. Instead, visitors to google.cn have to click once to go to the Hong Kong page.
“China has renewed our license,” a Google spokeswoman told Reuters. “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP (Internet Content Provider) license and we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China.”
Analysts estimate Google’s revenue in China to be in the range of $300 million to roughly $600 million, a [small] slice of the firm’s $24 billion in annual revenue.
But China’s long-term growth prospects are key for Google. With nearly 400 million users, China only has an Internet penetration rate of 25 percent with huge market opportunities in search, e-commerce and online gaming, analysts say.
Google has around 30 percent market share of China’s 7 billion yuan ($1 billion) search market, a distant second to the dominant local player, Baidu. Shares of Baidu, which have soared about 75 percent since Google’s China problems emerged in January, fell 2.7 percent on Friday.
The last paragraph may be a bit misleading. The part about soaring 75%. There were other marketing moves kicking in – and Baidu also did a 10:1 stock split in the same timeframe that kicked up their share price, as well.
From my personal point of view, staying in the market, staying in China and competing for the attention of netizens is smarter, economically and politically, than taking your marbles home in a snit.
Google negotiates rerouting in their China conflict
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Google is tweaking its China website in a last-ditch effort to save its search business in the world’s largest Internet market after butting heads with Beijing over Web censorship.
The google.cn search site will stop automatically redirecting users to Google’s uncensored search portal in Hong Kong — instead, visitors will be required to click a link to access the Hong Kong site…
“It’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable, and that if we continue redirecting users, our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed,” Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote on the company’s corporate blog.
“Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn so Google would effectively go dark in China,” he wrote…
The website tweak is Google’s latest attempt to strike a delicate balance between standing up to China’s policy of Internet censorship while maintaining a presence in a market considered key to its future growth…
Google, which battles Baidu for China’s 380 million Internet users, said in January it might quit the country over censorship and after it was hit by a hacking attack that it said came from within China.
But after keeping its promise to end self-censorship by automatically rerouting users to its Hong Kong site, Google now seems reluctant to abandon the Chinese market entirely…
China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday declined to comment on Google’s decision to end automatic rerouting, but Drummond said he hoped it would be acceptable to the Chinese government…
I don’t recall all of the chronology; but, I recall an interview on Chinese TV with one of the founders of Baidu. He’d been involved with folks from Yahoo and borrowed start-up money from them. When he went to pay it back – I believe it was a million dollars – he offered them cash or stock in Baidu. They took the cash.
About right for Yahoo.
Disclaimer: I own enough BIDU to get a couple of good Chinese meals if I sell it.
Google moves search service from China to Hong Kong
Google moved its China Internet search service to Hong Kong in a bid to resolve its dispute with Beijing over censored search results while keeping a foot in the world’s largest Internet market.
But comments on Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, suggested that Google’s attempt to strike a balance may not go over well with Beijing. Xinhua quoted a government official as saying Google has “violated its written promise” and is “totally wrong” by stopping censorship of its Chinese language search results.
Google said on Monday it intends to continue research and development work in China, as well as maintain a sales staff, even as it effectively stopped serving search results from its mainland Chinese site Google.cn and redirected traffic to an unfiltered search site in Hong Kong.
For the average mainland Chinese Web surfer, the change is unlikely to make much difference unless they can get around government-imposed firewalls that block searches for sensitive topics like the Dalai Lama…
“This is not the end of the saga, this is just the end of the chapter,” said Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Financial. “You sort of make China look like the bad guy and you think you’re going to be selling Google phones? Good luck, we’ll see how that goes…”
“The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” Google said in a post on its official Web blog on Monday.
The White House also said it was disappointed an agreement could not be reached between Google and China to allow the company to keep running Chinese search services…
Google said its decision to re-route traffic to an uncensored Hong Kong site in simplified Chinese that is specifically designed for users in mainland China is “entirely legal.”
You get the feeling everyone wishes the relationship could continue; but…
And I should note as a disclaimer I’m a shareholder in Baidu. Worth enough to buy Dim Sum for the whole family.
Google launches free music service in China
Google has launched a music search service in China that will give users access to free downloads of licensed songs, while capturing advertising revenue for music providers in a market rife with piracy.
The service poses a challenge to Baidu.com which dominates China’s Internet search market but has, along with other Chinese search providers, faced lawsuits charging that it facilitates copyright violations through downloads of unlicensed music.
Google said on Wednesday its service would initially let Internet users search tens of thousands of Chinese songs by singer or song title on its website and download them from Top100.cn, a Chinese music website co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming.
Advertising revenue from the service will be shared among Top100.cn and its music partners.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has estimated that more than 99 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated.
Rock on, dudes! Though I’m still a big fan of Baidu.
