All You Should Know about Baidu

Chinese global technology business Baidu, Inc., whose name translates to "hundred times," is based in Beijing's Haidian District and specializes in Internet-related services and products as well as artificial intelligence (AI). One of the biggest Internet and AI firms in the world, it.

The Cayman Islands serve as the legal domicile for the group's holding corporation. Eric Xu and Robin Li founded Baidu in January 2000. According to the Alexa Internet rankings, the Baidu search engine is now ranked as the sixth most popular website. Before Robin Li launched Baidu in 2000, he created an older search engine called RankDex in 1996.

In addition to a Chinese search engine and a mapping tool dubbed Baidu Maps, Baidu provides a number of services. About 57 search and community services are provided by Baidu, including Baidu Tieba, Baidu Wangpan, and Baidu Baike, an online encyclopedia (a keyword-based discussion forum).

What is Baidu

For markets outside of China, Baidu's Global Business Unit (GBU) is in charge of developing its international products and services. The product portfolio of Baidu GBU includes the Japanese smart projector popIn Aladdin, the keyboard apps Simeji and Facemoji Keyboard, the content recommendation platform popIn, the augmented reality network OmniAR, and the ad platform MediaGo, which targets Chinese advertisers trying to reach users abroad.

In order to serve as Snap Inc.'s official ad reseller for Snapchat in Greater China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, Baidu GBU and Snap Inc. partnered in 2017. In 2019, the alliance was expanded.

The "Global DU business" division of Baidu's international operations, which produced a number of useful apps such ES File Explorer, DU Caller, Mobojoy, Photo Wonder, and DU Recorder, among others, was sold off in 2018. The company is currently known as DO Global and runs independently of Baidu.

With a 76.05% market share in China's search engine market, Baidu is the second-largest search engine in the entire world. Baidu became the first Chinese firm to be listed on the NASDAQ-100 index in December 2007. Baidu's market value reached US$99 billion as of May 2018. In October 2018, Baidu became the first Chinese company to join the Partnership on AI, a group dedicated to computer ethics and based in the United States.

Attack using domain name redirection

The Iranian Cyber Army is suspected of being responsible for the attack on Twitter during the 2009 Iranian election protests. On January 12, 2010, Baidu.com's DNS records in the United States were changed, rendering the legitimate site inaccessible for four hours. A page stating "This site has been assaulted by Iranian Cyber Army" greeted internet surfers. Later, in retaliation, Chinese hackers launched attacks against Iranian websites and left notes.

After learning that Register.com's technical support employees had changed Baidu.com's email address at the request of an anonymous person despite failing security verification processes, Baidu later filed a lawsuit against Register.com for willful misconduct. Once the address had been altered, the person could hijack the domain by using Baidu's domain passwords that were supplied to them via the forgotten password service. After Register.com apologized, the lawsuit was resolved outside of court for an unknown sum.

91 Wireless procurement

On July 16, 2013, Baidu declared its intent to acquire NetDragon's 91 Wireless. The app store, which is what 91 Wireless is best known for, reportedly has privacy and other legal difficulties. In what was reportedly the largest deal in China's IT industry, Baidu (Hong Kong) Limited's wholly-owned subsidiary Baidu (Hong Kong) Limited announced on August 14, 2013, that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire 91 Wireless Web-soft Limited from NetDragon Web-soft Inc. for $1.85 billion.

Name

Baidu literally translates to "a hundred times" or "countless times." The last line of the classic poem "Green Jade Table in the Lantern Festival" by Xin Qiji is quoted, which reads, "Having looked in the crowd hundreds of times, suddenly turning around, she is there in the dimmest candlelight."

Advertisements

Baidu Tuiguang, the company's main advertising product, is comparable to Google Ads and AdSense. It is a platform for pay-per-click advertising that enables advertisers to have their adverts displayed in the pages of search results on Baidu and on other websites affiliated with Baidu Union.

However, Baidu also bases its search results on money paid by advertisements. Chinese netizens have expressed disapproval and cynicism as a result, with People's Daily commenting in 2018 on concerns over the accuracy of Baidu results. The top two pages of search results frequently contain numerous paid advertisements.

Baidu uses a network of resellers to distribute its advertising products. Because they are completely in Chinese, Baidu's web administrative tools are difficult for non-Chinese speakers to use. Recently, a third-party business started creating a solution for Baidu advertising campaigns with an English-language interface. Advertisers can only utilize paid advertising if they have a registered company address in China or one of a number of other East Asian nations.

Placement compensation (P4P)

The main source of income for Baidu is internet marketing services. Through Baidu's pay for placement (P4P) platform, businesses may connect with internet consumers looking for information about their goods or services. Customers can bid on keywords that will cause their webpage information and link to be displayed by using automated internet tools to produce text-based descriptions of their web pages.

Customers can activate their accounts on Baidu's P4P platform at any moment via an automated online sign-up process. The P4P platform is an online marketplace that connects clients who compete for top placement in search results with Internet users. In addition, Baidu sells some of its online marketing services through third-party distributors, who are compensated with discounts in exchange for their services.

Baidu provides a number of advisory services, including account management, performance reporting, and keyword suggestions. Baidu suggests related words and phrases to use as text or keywords in search listings. These recommendations can raise the user's propensity to transact with the customer by increasing clickthrough rates on the customer's listing.

Additionally, daily reports of clickthrough rates, clicked keywords, total costs incurred, and statistical data broken down by region are all made available by Baidu online. However, Chinese internet users have also criticized this.

ProTheme

Some of the Baidu Union's members can display promotional links from Baidu's customers that are pertinent to the theme and content of their websites by using the ProTheme services that Baidu provides. Based on how many times its customers' links are clicked, Baidu makes money from ProTheme services and distributes it to its Baidu Union members in accordance with pre-set terms.

Customers can display query-sensitive text links at a specific location on Baidu's search results pages by using its fixed-ranking services. By displaying their advertisements only when their target Internet users visit specific Baidu Web pages, its Targetizement services allow customers to reach their targeted Internet users.

Google TV

In collaboration with the online advertising and technology firm Ads it! Media Corporation, Baidu runs the Baidu TV ad service. With the help of its ad targeting and matching system, Baidu TV gives advertisers access to the websites of its Baidu Union members, allowing them to select the Websites on which they post their video advertisements. Additionally, Brand-Link, a brand advertising service, is provided. In order to help its current clients with their sales and marketing activities, Baidu introduced My Marketing Center in June 2008.

It is a tailored platform that combines industry data, market trends, business news, and industry publications. Customers can display query-sensitive and non-query-sensitive advertisements, including graphical advertisements, on its websites using other forms of its online advertising services.

Google Union

The Baidu Union is made up of a number of external websites and programs. A Baidu search box or toolbar is included by union members, who align its sponsored links with the information on their websites. Their users can utilize the toolbar or search box on Baidu to do searches and click sponsored links that are placed on their websites.

Additionally, Baidu has introduced programs that allow it to share the revenue generated by its customers' online advertisements with the owners of websites that are part of its Baidu Union network. There were 230,000 partner websites that had Baidu Union advertisements on them as of May 2011.

Competition

Competitors of Baidu include Sina, NetEase's Youdao and PaiPai, Alibaba's Taobao, TOM Online, and EachNet in addition to Petal, Sogou, Google Search, 360 Search (www.so.com), Yahoo! China, and eachNet.

The most popular search engine in China is Baidu, which holds 76.05 percent of the market. According to a research from internetlivestats.com, there were 705 million Internet users in China by the end of 2015.

In a Wall Street Journal article from August 2010, Baidu downplayed the advantages of Google moving its China search service to Hong Kong, but Beijing-based research firm Analysys International reports that Baidu's revenue share in China's search-advertising market increased by six percentage points in the second quarter to 70%.

Furthermore, it is clear that Baidu is making an effort to break into the online social networking space. As of 2011, it is considering collaborating with Facebook, which would result in a Baidu-run Chinese version of the global social network.

If this idea were to be carried out, it would put Baidu up against the three widely used Chinese social networks Qzone, Renren, and Kaixin001 as well as the dominant instant messaging service Tencent QQ in competition.

Hudong accused Baidu of being monopolistic in a complaint it sent to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on February 22, 2012, requesting for an examination of Baidu's actions.

According to a report from CNZZ.com, Baidu's share of the Chinese search market fell to 56.3% by August 2014, while Qihoo 360, the company's closest rival who rebranded its search engine as so.com, saw an increase in market share to 29.0%.

It was claimed in February 2015 that Baidu had used anticompetitive strategies in Brazil against PSafe and Qihoo 360, two Brazilian online security companies (the largest investor of PSafe).

General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE), also known as a competition in AI natural language processing, saw Baidu surpass Microsoft and Google in December 2019.