Search Engines Set To Vie For China

ackthpt writes "Could China be where the battle for top search engine is waged? Reuters is carrying an article on the play for the Chinese search engine market. Already the second largest internet market in the world, there are estimated 80 million users in China and the number growing fast. Yahoo's acquisition 3721.com, Google-styled Baidu.com and Zhongsou.com are already poised and profitable. Where is Google? Blocked at one time, Google has made its way into China. Their handy cached pages are not available, but they do offer the Ad Words service in chinese to lure business. Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC, where it's noted that houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access. Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."

Comments

Couple of Points

[nemesisj]

There's a couple of points in the BBC article that are very misleading, which I'd like to draw attention to.

The worst issue is when the lady being interviewed says "Everywhere we go there are good internet connections." This statement needs to be qualified, since a good "broadband" internet connection in China is typically on par with a decent dialup setup in the US. Most Chinese cities have less bandwidth than a typical large state university. The city I lived in until recently only had 2 T3 lines for the entire urban area of 7 million people. A broadband connection would manage downloads of 4k a second at 2 in the morning, and maybe 1k or less during the day.

Also, I get the impression that she's using canned comparisons that one might use when talking to investors in this article - her anecdote about no heat but a great internet connection is no doubt accurate (China until recently did not allow central heating south of the Yangtze river) but is needlessy sensational if you really know what's going on.

Likewise, the fact that she's never given bribes is almost undoubtedly a lie, or she's taking advantage of the fact that doing business in China involves the use of many tactics that would commonly be referred to as bribes in the US.

Just a few minor points - the reality is of course that China will become a much more active participant in internet related activities, so the overall point of the article I agree with.