The new Google? Baidu's big plans to bust out of China

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329794.200-the-new-google-baidus-big-plans-to-bust-out-of-china.html#.U9VX0IBdVtl

by nkurz • 12 years ago

27 48 12 years ago

newscientist.com

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

People don't trust Google as it is, why would they trust China's "Google"?

gress• 12 years ago

The fact that Google has destroyed user trust is what gives Baidu an opening.

EduardoBautista• 12 years ago

But what does Baidu offer that DuckDuckGo or Bing do not?

maximumoverload• 12 years ago

"I am not trusting Google with my data, because it's in bed with US government too much.

Instead, I will trust BaiDu, that's even more in bed with far more oppresive goverment."

I don't know about that.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

But Baidu has none to begin with. We already know they spy and censor for the Chinese government.

I'm all for not using American services, but the Chinese ones wouldn't exactly be my first choice, as an alternative.

krapp4• 12 years ago

It's not an American company, that's more than enough reason for a lot of people.

cscurmudgeon• 12 years ago

True. China is an international beacon for human rights and freedom.

jmsdnns• 12 years ago

Would be fascinating to see them compete in markets without state influence.

RyanONeill1970• 12 years ago

If their web spider is any indication of how fit they are, they really need to shape up.

The Baidu spider is the IE6 of web bots, it hammers sites, fumbles around breaking everything with its crap JavaScript compiler and causing so many errors that it's easier to just block it. The same with Yandex.

I really hope they fix it, but a search for the Baidu user agent will show a lot of results just wanting to block it. They need to fix that.

rebel• 12 years ago

"This article appeared in print under the headline 'China's Google' is on a roll'" ... Which was a much more appropriate headline for this article. Did they start changing their online headlines solely for the purpose of click bait?

noname123• 12 years ago

Russia has Yandex, China has Baidu; hopefully Brazil and India will one day come with their own country's native search engine to counter-balance the West's juggernaut.

kawera• 12 years ago

Baidu is hiring in Brazil.

zorked• 12 years ago

Brazil's native search engine got bought by Google many years ago.

illicium• 12 years ago

Both Yandex and Baidu are just copying Google's every move though. It's competition, but there is little innovation going on.

seanmcdirmid5• 12 years ago

Isn't that pretty much the whole Chinese internet industry? At any rate, there isn't much reason to use Baidu outside of china.

varkson• 12 years ago

Having used the Baidu Android software, it's really really nice. I'd love to see a version in English.

drakaal• 12 years ago

Baidu will have to go from copy cat to innovator to make this work.

Right now Baidu is missing a differentiatior that shows how it is better. Unlike T-Shirts that you can find a market for knock-offs search engines are free to the end user so you have to compete on quality, or on "default install". Baidu is missing both of those.

valarauca1• 12 years ago

I hate to call Baidu a 'chinese knock off', but in the purest sense of the word it is. They simply take Western internet phenomenons; Street Maps, Open collaborative encyclopedia, crawler based search engine, even a TV/youtube service which I've used to watch star trek (TNG torrents post season 6-7 get very slow and netflix didn't exist at the time). And copy their feature sets, even stealing whole american templates. Last time I used Baidu's video service they literally stole their layout and color scheme from pornhub down to ad placement and video selection.

Lastly Betteridge's Law of Headlines.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

verroq• 12 years ago

I'm not a racist, but I think all the Chinese do is copy other people's work.

bpodgursky• 12 years ago

I'm not a racist, but when a country has almost no IP protections and artificially limits access to international competitors via a firewall, it sets up an environment where copying other peoples' work is a very low-risk and profitable proposition.

vph• 12 years ago

Rumours have been circulating that the Chinese search engine is developing a bike that could drive itself through packed city streets.

I will believe it when I see it.

ihnorton• 12 years ago

It is kind of fun to imagine fleets of riderless bikes shuttling themselves around cities to meet demand. HubWay, CitiBike, and similar services would love that; I don't have any citation, but I would guess that manual shuttling and redistribution of bikes is a significant portion of their operating cost.

magicalist• 12 years ago

Baidu is the biggest search engine in China, beating Google as well as local competitors like Sogou and 360

That's not terribly surprising given that Google has been blocked in China since June 1.

https://en.greatfire.org/google.com

jpatokal2• 12 years ago

More relevantly, Google pulled out of China in 2010 after refusing to comply with censorship requirements. They had a 31% share at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

seanmcdirmid5• 12 years ago

They were not blocked until June, however. And now they are almost completely shut out.

schuke• 12 years ago

Although many would dismiss Baidu as a Chinese Google copycat, the fact is Baidu's founder developed his own page ranking method independently around/before the time PageRank came into existence.

Here's what Wikipedia says in its PageRank entry (Robin Li is Baidu's founder and CEO)

A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.[16] The technology in RankDex would be patented by 1999[17] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[18][19] Li's work would be referenced by some of Larry Page's U.S. patents for his Google search methods.[20]

I do not like Baidu and use Bing whenever possible (Google is too unstable in China). But again, the fact is one can dismiss Baidu for its many products but perhaps not its search.

The new Google? Baidu's big plans to bust out of China

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