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    • Mon Sep 29th 16:34 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Baidu vs. Google: Who's the #1 Country-Specific Search Engine?
      Baidu wins WSJ's China's Annual 'Most Innovative' Award and comes in 5th for 'Most Admired' in all of China with over 2400 executives voting.


      online.wsj.com/article...


      Excerpts that mention baidu:

      In this survey's featured category, "Innovative in Responding to Customer Needs," readers gave first place to Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing search-engine company that claims to out-Google Google Inc. Baidu cites research showing it conducts more than 60% of China's Internet searches by doing a better job looking up information in Chinese, the second-most-popular language on the Web.

      In this survey's featured category, "Innovative in Responding to Customer Needs," readers gave first place to Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing search-engine company that claims to out-Google Google Inc. Baidu cites research showing it conducts more than 60% of China's Internet searches by doing a better job looking up information in Chinese, the second-most-popular language on the Web. Some 427 million people surf the Internet in English, compared with 233 million in Chinese, according to research published by Internetworldstats.com...

      Baidu Chairman and founder Robin Li named his company for a Song Dynasty poem. The Baidu Internet homepage has the look and feel of Google, a company named for a play on "Googol," the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros. But Baidu rejects the copycat label, noting that Mr. Li got his first patent on Internet search in 1995, the same year Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as computer-science students at Stanford University.

      A spokeswoman for Baidu says at least three functions on the Baidu.com homepage "distinguish us from our competitors in the Chinese search market." The company says its Baidu Knows system offers user-generated answers to questions and is the largest online question-and-answer system in the world.

      To tap the Web-engineering potential in China, Baidu holds an annual programming competition that asks users to create, for instance, a martial-arts character using the fewest lines of computer code to maximized effect. One hiccup that limits the competition's usefulness as a recruiting tool: Many of the best engineers it locates are high-school students, too young to hire. At an average age of 26, Baidu's own employees aren't much older.

      Baidu is structured differently than Google. About 60% of Baidu's more than 6,700 employees are in sales and marketing. At Google, only about 40% of 16,805 employees last year were in sales and marketing, while 34% were in research and development.

      The company has had setbacks. Its well-regarded chief financial officer died in an accident late last year; he has since been succeeded by a former China financial chief of General Motors Corp. More recently, Baidu was accused by a group of domestic and foreign record companies as being "the largest and most incorrigible purveyor of pirated music in China." Baidu said it "believes in copyright protection" and "continues to work to fight piracy on the Internet by developing innovative business models."


      A total of 2,477 executives and professionals participated in the survey, which was conducted in 2007, between May 11 and July 3. On behalf of The Wall Street Journal, market-research firm Colmar Brunton polled subscribers as well as other businesspeople in the 12 Asian-Pacific countries.
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    • Mon Sep 29th 10:11 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Baidu vs. Google: Who's the #1 Country-Specific Search Engine?
      Patrick, thanks. Can you give us any insight into the ppc bid prices on Baidu? Back 6-7 years ago bids for many 1st tier terms on Google were less than $.10 and most 2nd and 3rd tier terms were $.05 and within 24-36 months or something they all skyrocketed to avg more than $.40 and Google became the cash machine it is. Any feedback on ppc bid and general ad prices on Baidu and how they have been impacted by their growing advertiser base and popularity? The way I see it, Chinese people can click away just as easily as Americans and if their bid prices get up to even $.20 or more on avg then Baidu's earnings and revenue will be incredible. Baidu might even be monetizing search queries better than Google with more ads being clicked on a % basis.
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    • Sun Sep 28th 09:37 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Baidu vs. Google: Who's the #1 Country-Specific Search Engine?
      Thanks for the feedback. I will look into it. The reason I believe the baidu MP3 search area only does around 6% of their traffic is because both Alexa.com and ChinaRank.com show this same exact measurement and they are totally independent.

      Their CFO Jennifer Li was asked about the music issue recently and she said they are working on it, forming partnerships, going for ad supported.

      from Interview:

      Q) How big of a threat are the legal challenges from music companies over illegal downloads?

      A) We have been resolving a couple of issues in that area. Baidu respects intellectual property rights and takes the matter seriously. We believe in advertiser-supported digital music and have worked with record companies to promote their artists online. For instance, we work with major record companies like Rock Music and EMI, we run music promotions, and share the advertising revenue associated with the songs that are downloaded.

      www.cfo.com/article.cf...

      Also, if you go to Baidu.jp and use the Google translation tool you will find a press release put out this summer about how they have partnered with 70+ music companies and are going for fully ad supported. I suspect baidu is likely working on this more than you think.

      I bet their new ecommerce business will drive 10% of their growing traffic and they will start rolling ad supported music and music sales more into the mix. I believe Baidu will start eliminating copyrighted mp3's when the courts tell them to do so. Up until now Baidu has won their lawsuits regarding this.

      Thanks for the feedback though.
      View article »
    • Thu Sep 25th 16:41 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Baidu vs. Google: Who's the #1 Country-Specific Search Engine?
      Your right, Baidu does have issues with liking to mp3 tracks that are copyrighted. Google also has problems with the same thing, and they have issues with people posting copyrighted material on Youtube. Thus far the Chinese court system hasn't punished sites too badly for this, instead electing to focus on shutting down the sites that actual host the copyrighted material. This is how Baidu prefers to have this enforced as they dont want to be responsible for checking copyrights on the billions of pages they index as its a massive feat. Lawsuits against Baidu are for small amounts of money and the judgment against Yahoo China was for less than $30k. Alexa.com and ChinaRank.com only show Baidu's MP3 channel getting 6% of their total traffic so switching to fully ad supported might hurt traffic a little but wont kill them by any means. It will probably just give them another great revenue stream. Baidu recently put out a press release in Japan about how they are partnering with 70 music labels and their cfo was interviewed on CFO.com recently about their music model and made strong comments about their ad supported music system that they want to go forward with. The article I wrote was simply meant to point out how Baidu gets more search queries in China than Google does in the USA. I own more money in Google shares than Baidu fyi but can't help but be impressed with the growth of the Chinese web and Baidu's opportunities.

      BNP Paribas put out and sec filing today taking a 7.8% stake in baidu. Morgan Stanley owns around 9%, etc. Baidu is attracting major money.
      View article »
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