The American cab company Lyft is launching robotaxis from Baidu in Germany in 2026. German manufacturers are at risk of being left behind when it comes to autonomous driving.
By Christian Domke Seidel
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 the relevant news about Baidu. 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, the company offers users a variety of other applications such as a map service, news services and cloud computing. An overview of Baidu's services, which are comparable to those offered by Google: However, the search engine is only part of the company of the same name. Baidu operates a streaming service under the name iQiyi, which has a cooperation with Netflix. DuerOS is an AI system. Various electrical devices can be paired with the Xiaodu smart speaker. Baidu is also involved 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 it handles 71% of search queries, it has a major competitor in Sogou (20%). Sogou is now a subsidiary of Tencent. The big advantage is that Sogou is the only search engine that can be used 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 located behind a firewall. People living in China cannot google. The background to this is a dispute between the American search engine and the Chinese government over the censorship of content. Google can be accessed from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. But not from mainland China. Google has a market share of 1.95% in China. Switching Baidu to German or English The Baidu search engine cannot be switched to German or English. The site always uses Chinese. However, users have the option of choosing between simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. The search results are also not suitable after entering English words. Chinese users recommend Microsoft's Bing search engine for English search queries within the People's Republic, and the results displayed by the search engine are exclusively Chinese content. Content from websites whose domain does not end in.cn is not displayed. If you want to make your content visible on Baidu, you also have to do without a large number of censored terms. Founder and CEO Robin Li Robin Li founded the Baidu search engine together with Eric Xu in 2000. The duo chose a panda paw as their logo. Li had already developed the Rankdex algorithm that year. The basis for the later search engine. The software assessed the quality and therefore relevance of pages according to the number of hyperlinks that lead to the pages. This technology was also used by Larry Page when he founded Google, and Baidu literally 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 the poet Xin Qiji, who was active in the Song Dynasty around 800 years ago. In the poem, the search for a beauty that retreats into chaos is compared to the search for dreams. IPO and rise of Baidu In 2001, Robin Li enabled companies to buy advertising space on Baidu. The amount paid was linked to the number of clicks. A business model that was quickly adopted by Google. A special search function for images and news articles followed in 2003. The special feature was that the algorithm was able to identify similar images and news and group them together for the user, and 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. The first Chinese company ever to do so. Continuous growth made founder Robin Li a multi-billionaire. In 2021, his fortune amounted to around USD 10.9 billion. Criticism of censorship by Baidu The company and the Chinese government have been criticized worldwide for heavily censoring search results. This is despite the fact that the creators of websites have already been censored. The search engine displays few or no results for certain topics, but the censorship can also be useful. The government of the People's Republic had instructed the company to cover sensitive images in its map service Baidu Maps with blank tiles. This was intended to keep certain buildings secret. Mostly military bases, prisons, power plants and detention camps for Uyghurs. In order to discover the camps, journalists concentrated on the areas that Baidu had censored when analyzing the regions. Around 315 internment camps were uncovered in this way. All news about the search engine in China The influence of search engines on society, the economy and democracy is enormous. The Table.Media editorial team provides all the news about Baidu and Robin Li.
