Baidu
| Company type | Public (Nasdaq: BIDU) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet information providers |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Beijing, China |
Key people | Robin Li, Chairman, CEO Shawn Wang, CFO David Zhu, COO |
| Products | search engine |
| Revenue | $107.359 million USD (2006) |
| $33.685 million USD (2006) | |
| $38.668 million USD (2006) | |
Number of employees | 3,113 |
| Website | www.baidu.com |
Baidu (Chinese: 百度; pinyin: bǎi dù) (Nasdaq: BIDU) is the leading Chinese search engine that can search websites, audio files, and images. It has also an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia (Baidu Baike), and a searchable keyword-based discussion forums. As of July 28, 2007, it is ranked seventh in Alexa's internet rankings.[1]
Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files.[2] Its interface is cloned from Google.
Name
The name of Baidu was inspired by a Song Dynasty poem constructed in the ci form, written by Xin Qiji in the 12th century.[3]
Services
Baidu's most popular feature is its support for multimedia search, called "MP3 Search" and its Baidu 500 is a comprehensive listing of popular Chinese music. The rankings are based on download numbers. It can locate file formats such as MP3, WMA and SWF. The multimedia search feature is mainly used in searches for Chinese pop music. While such works are copyrighted under Chinese law, Baidu is technically not breaking any laws according to their interpretations of Chinese law as stated on their Legalese page. Chinese government and industry sources stated that Baidu.com received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a fully-fledged news website. Thus Baidu.com will be able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. The company is already getting its news department ready. Baidu.com is the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license.[4]
Baidu has started its own search engine in Japan found at www.baidu.jp.; it is the first regular service that the company provides outside of China. It includes a search bar for Web page and image searches. It also includes user help and advanced services. [5]
The MP3 search of Baidu has been criticized by Special 301 report by stating that “Baidu as the largest of an estimated seven or more China-based ‘MP3 search engines’ offering deep links to song files for downloads or streaming.”[6]
See: Intellectual property in the People's Republic of China
Yahoo! China recently offered a similar service.
Baidu uses the same "pay-per-click" model for advertising revenues as Google.
Censorship
In compliance with the policies of Internet censorship in China, the Chinese language version of Baidu filters controversial material from its search results. This does not apply to Baidu Japan, which drew over 60% of its traffic from within China before subsequently being blocked on the Mainland.
Baidu Europe
Baidu™ Europe (2003) is a services company in the Netherlands offering an extremely wide range of internet services and products.The internet company Baidu Europe is entering the European search engine market through the website www.baidu.eu. Baidu Europe is not part of Baidu.com.
Just one year after its launch, almost two thirds (63%) of the European online population are aware of the .eu Internet top level domain name and 45 % know that they, as residents of EU, can get their own .eu domain name. These are some of the findings of a survey conducted by the independent company, InSites, on behalf of EURid.
References
- ^ "Alexa Web Search - Top 500". Retrieved 2006-07-28.
- ^ "MSN Money - BIDU". MSN Money. Retrieved 2006-05-11.
- ^ Baidu website
- ^ "Google's Lookalike is Expanding in China". Gadget4boys.com. 23 January 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "China's Google in Japan". Infoniac.com. March 23 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "2007 Special 301 Report" (PDF). Office of the United States Trade Representative. 30 April 2007.
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External links
- Baidu.com
- Baidu.jp
- The Baidu Story
- Baidu Review