China • Baidu • News
The Chinese company Baidu operates the search engine of the same name. It is one of the three most frequently accessed websites in the world. The Table.Media editorial team provides all relevant Baidu news.
What does Baidu do?
Baidu is the largest search engine in China. It is structured and functions like its western counterpart Google. In addition to the search function, Baidu offers its users a variety of other applications such as a map service, news services, cloud computing. An overview of Baidu’s services, which are comparable to Google’s offerings:
- Baidu Maps: Map service
- Baidu News: news portal
- Baidu Translate: translation tool
- Baidu Baike: Wikipedia-like encyclopedia
- Baidu Wenku: content sharing platform for teaching and research materials
- Baidu Videos: Portal that streams Chinese movies and series for free
- Baidu Zhidao: China’s most popular Q&A platform
- Baidu WangPan: cloud storage service
- Baidu Tieba: Reddit-like online community
- Baidu Tushu: search engine for books
However, the Baidu search engine is just one part of the company of the same name. Under the name iQiyi, Baidu operates a streaming service that has a cooperation with Netflix. DuerOS is an AI system. Various electrical devices can be paired with the Xiaodu smart speaker. Baidu also has a stake in Apolong with 39 other companies. A project that develops connected, driverless cars.
Baidu: The only search engine in China?
Baidu is not the only search engine in China. Although 71 percent of search queries go through it, there is a major competitor in Sogou (20 percent). Sogou is now a subsidiary of Tencent. The big advantage is that Sogou can be used as the only search engine within the Wechat functions. Other search engines in China such as Bing (2.5%), Haosou (1.59%) and Shenma (1.28%) only play a minor role.
Google is blocked in China. The site is behind a firewall. Anyone living in China cannot google. The background is a dispute between the American search engine and the Chinese government over content censorship. Google can be accessed from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. However, not from mainland China. This gives Google a market share of 1.95 percent in China.
Can you switch Baidu to English or German?
The Baidu search engine cannot be switched to English or German. The site basically uses Chinese. However, here users have the option to choose between a simplified (Simplified Chinese) and a traditional Chinese. Also, the search results are not suitable after entering English words. Chinese users recommend Microsoft’s Bing search engine for English search queries within the People’s Republic.
The results displayed by Baidu are exclusively Chinese content. Content from websites whose domain does not end in .cn is not displayed by Baidu. Those who want to make their content visible on Baidu must also do without a large number of censored terms.
Who is Robin Li? Baidu Founder and CEO
Robin Li founded the search engine Baidu together with Eric Xu in 2000. The duo chose a panda paw as the logo for Baidu. Li had already developed the Rankdex algorithm that year. The basis for the later search engine Baidu. The software evaluated the quality and thus relevance of pages according to the number of hyperlinks that lead to the pages. A technology that Larry Page also referred to when he founded Google.
Literally, Baidu means “hundreds of times.”The name of the search engine refers to the poem “Green Jade Table at the Festival of Lights.” It is by poet Xin Qiji, who worked in the Song Dynasty about 800 years ago. In the poem, the search for a beauty that retreats in chaos is compared to the search for dreams.
The Baidu poem, from which the name of the Chinese search engine is derived: “Hundreds of thousands of times, I searched for her in the chaos. Suddenly, I happened to turn to where the lights were fading, and there she stood.”
Baidu: IPO and Rise
In 2001, Robin Li enabled companies to buy advertising space on Baidu. The amount paid was tied to the amount of clicks. It was a business model that Google would quickly adopt. In 2003, a special search function for images and news articles followed. The special feature was that the algorithm was able to identify similar images and news and group them for the user.
Baidu has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since August 2005. The search engine was so successful that it was included in the NASDAQ-100 Index just two years later. As the first Chinese company ever. Continuous growth made founder Robin Li a multi-billionaire. In 2021, his fortune will be around 10.9 billion dollars.
Why is there criticism of censorship at Baidu?
The company Baidu and the Chinese Communist Party are criticized worldwide because the search results are heavily censored. This is despite the fact that website creators have already been censored. For certain topics, Baidu does not display any search results, or none at all.
But the censorship can also be useful. The government of the People’s Republic had instructed Baidu to cover sensitive images with blank tiles in its map service Baidu Maps. This was to keep certain buildings secret. Mostly military bases, prisons, power plants and internment camps of Uyghurs. In order to discover the camps, journalists focused on the areas that Baidu had censored when evaluating the areas. About 315 internment camps were uncovered in this way.
Baidu news: lastest information on the Chinese search engine
The influence of search engines on society, economy and democracy is enormous. All Baidu News and latest topics on Robin Li is provided by the Table.Media editorial team.