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Google Losing Ground in China?
TG writes "Yahoo is running an article about a recent study released by a Chinese Internet research group that shows Google losing market share to their Chinese rival, Baidu.com. From the article: 'The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based China Internet Network Information Center, reported that Baidu.com Inc. boosted its market share in Beijing by 10.8 percentage points to 52 percent. Google Inc.'s share was at 33 percent, as the American Internet search engine kept its customer base steady while the overall market grew, said the survey, seen Tuesday on CNNIC's Web site.'" Factual analysis or results driven by self interest?
At least there's one country where Ballmer doesn't have to fucking kill Google and Larry Page.
190 to go...
Google hired that guy away from MS with the intention of shoring up their presence in PROC. It's quite obvious that they were willing to deal with the risk for *something*.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Right after we bought suso.com, I noticed that a bunch of people from China were already going to the suso.com address, even though there was nothing at the URL before. So I figured they meant to go to suso.cn, which seems to be a search site as well. I asked a Chinese friend of mine and she said that Su means fast and so means search or find in Chinese.
I can't find it!!
I see italitized text, but no link to the article itself.
Looking for information on a subject? Just Bi>Baidu it!
Nope..not the same at all...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It has a few things that Google doesn't have and probably never could have. The first is a multimedia search engine which links directly to online rips of copyrighted materials. Any Joe Chan over in China wanting to download something like the latest Britney Spears album can hop on Baidu and grab any which link they find. Google, being an American company would be hard pressed to do something as outrageous as that which would no doubt incur the wrath of the RIAA and MPAA, not to mention the Boy Scouts of America (just kidding, but BSA too).
The second is that Baidu is in Chinese, by Chinese, and for Chinese. Google may be in Chinese, but it is owned by American company and anyone who has done business in Asia knows, Not Invented Here was invented there. So Baidu has the hometurf advantage.
And finally, Google simply doesn't bring up the sorts of search results that people are generally looking for anymore. Lots of random searchvertisements, links to other lame search engines (with no results!), and contentless blogs are the results you get with Google when searching outside of English. With Baidu, it's still pretty new enough that it isn't overwhelmed with spam.
What's the deal with the story writeup with no links, though?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
a 2.6 percent stake in Baidu... Is Google hedging its bets to some extent?
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
How does this site work, anyway?
really 867993
Karma schkarma
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/ap/ ap_083105.asp?trk=top
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Google does have a stake in Baidu.com, and they're also a rumored takeover target for Google. It's only a minority stake, but still, most analysts say that Google is aligning itself financially toward Baidu.com, while Yahoo recently made a large investment in one of Baidu.com's rivals, Alibaba.
Most of the computers we came across in China were indeed using Baidu as their start up page.
Just saying...
Another thing that most people don't think about is that Chinese people are proud of their country. This comes as a strange thought to most people who went through university indoctrination in the West, but Chinese people will prefer a Chinese solution when one is available. Even if it's a poorer alternative than the foreign one (it'll get better if we use it, they think).
And as someone else pointed out, baidu.com has links to "multimedia" (i.e. pirated movies) that google would get sued over. I mean, look at their site, it's got "mp3 search" right on the front page. And check out this site, it's got plenty of entire albums available for your listening pleasure, and it's a legitimate site in China.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
From what I could tell it looked like the Baidu search was tailored for music copyright violation. Google couldn't get away with that being a US company, but Baidu seems to have no qualms giving the finger to the RIAA.
Yeah, and no doubt we're going to see it again in a couple days.
For a minute there I thought we were going to go a WHOLE FUCKING DAY without a story about Google. Thank God for ScuttleMonkey's heroic efforts! He made it in with just 38 minutes to go! Nicely done!
Although I must admit I am more than slightly disturbed that there was a two day period wherein not a single story about Google was posted. Surely the parties involved have been disciplined accordingly.
is probably:
Google Losing Ground in China
Apparently, "ScuttleMonkey" forgot to provide a link to said Yahoo article. So, instead, I will ask all these fine /.'ers out there to fill me in. What's up? More google overlord type article thingies?
Can someone who knows better Chinese than me tell me what Baidu means? "Bai" sounds like "one hundred" and "du" sounds like "degree". 100 degrees makes no sense but it does sound a lot like the meaning of Googol (or Google) in Chinese. I could be way off on this one since Mandarin is not my native dialect and it's been a while since I've studied it.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
TG should've written "The Associated Press has an article about a recent study (English PDF) released by a Chinese Internet research group that shows Google losing market share to their Chinese rival, Baidu.com. From the article: 'The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based China Internet Network Information Center, reported that Baidu.com Inc. boosted its market share in Beijing by 10.8 percentage points to 52 percent. Google Inc.'s share was at 33 percent, as the American Internet search engine kept its customer base steady while the overall market grew, said the survey, seen Tuesday on CNNIC's Web site.'" Factual analysis or results driven by self interest? Or just another interesting article posted to Slashdot with editorial opinions but no editorial checking?
The report itself has a pie chart with the following breakdown: Baidu 51.5%, Google 32.9%, Sohu 4.6%, Sino 4.0%, Yahoo 3.7%, and 3.3% other in Beijing; 43.9% Baidu vs. 38.2% in Shanghai; and 48.0% Baidu vs. 28.7% Google in Guangzhou.
However, the next page breaks down searches by category, and Baidu is only in the lead (55% vs. 15% Google) in downloadable music. In all other categories, Google is in the lead. Indeed, 60% of users who use Google primary and Baidu secondary say that the reason is Baidu's music search.
This confirms that Google is a better (more popular at least) search engine, of course, but Baidu is either better at searching Chinese music or, as another poster said, Baidu can link to MP3s without the RIAA being able to do anything about it.
In Russia, there are a few popular search engines, the most popular being Yandex ("Ya" is the last letter in the Russian alphabet and also a word meaning "I", so it's Index with "Ya" instead of "I"). It has tons of free services, it has paid "ad words" style advertising, and most importantly its spiders are optimized for Russian sites. For Russian language searches it's simply BETTER than Google, believe it or not. If Yandex doesn't find it, Google is used as a last resort.
How the hell does that company have any market share at all? It's in some crazy foreign language or something.
>Google owns a minority stake in Baidu, it should be noted.
Google couldn't afford to buy a bigger stake? Mmmm...stake...
Where's this mighty fine Baidu restaurant of which you speak?
mmMMm...stake...Is that fucking country capable of ANYTHING other than producing knock-offs of others' work?
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fbaidu.com&langpair=zh-CN%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
Yahoo says Google is losing market share in China. Tomorrow Google will say Yahoo is losing market share in Europe. Tuesday dogpile will say that internet search engine usage is down worldwide and encyclopedia britanica will offer a discount on Hard Copy Encyclopedias on Wednesday.
It doesn't even know where Slashdot is!
I can't find slashdot anywhere in the first few pages, but Google shows up a lot.
Simon's Rock College
Yahoo, as seen http://baidu.com/clients/index.htmlhere is listed as one of their clients? I don't read Chinese at all but seems quite the coincidence since they released the article. Yahoo? A search engine's client? I don't get it.
Parts or the whole of Google and GMail are often blocked entirely or contents censored when accessed from behind China's Great Firewall. Reasons for this could include a combination of censorship of ideas and favoritism toward Baidu and other local companies.
Baidu also contains features that Google cannot do, like their very convenient MP3 search. This may be a strong reason why they are favored by users. Even users outside of China are realizing this.
"Bai" is like "Thai", which means "spicy hot". "Du" is like "dookie", which is what "Bai" food tastes like. Maybe. I dunno. I just translated it by taking those two words from my Asus motherboard manual, flipping back to the English section.
Comments/Questions 1) Doesn't baidu.com look a lot like google? 2) If Baidu.com basically links you directly to illegal music and movies what's stopping us, I mean certain people's, from using it?
is there an easier way to karma-whore than by referencing 1984?
Sounds like you're getting a bit of a woody.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If this search engine links to multimedia
files, I can't wait for the english version!
It has a few things that Google doesn't have and probably never could have. The first is a multimedia search engine which links directly to online rips of copyrighted materials. Any Joe Chan over in China wanting to download something like the latest Britney Spears album can hop on Baidu and grab any which link they find. Google, being an American company would be hard pressed to do something as outrageous as that which would no doubt incur the wrath of the RIAA and MPAA,
China has new copyright laws and has acted as if they are going to enforce them. Don't expect this sort of feature to last for long on Baidu. The link is to a Chinese article, so it could be filled with propaganda, but they are acting this way to favor western companies. If the AA's make enough noise, Baidu will fall in line too.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Oh yeah, silly me...
I'm sure google will innovate to beat the competition !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
After using baidu during my summer internship in Shanghai, I discovered Baidu has one clear advantage over Google Chinese language version that has nothing to do with number pages indexed. One of the advantages is that Chinese characters are very complex and require larger font sizes to see clearly, which is why Baidu's search input field uses size 33px font, compared with Google's 20px. These small details make a difference, especially since one needs to check you input often because input is most often based on some form of predictive text entry, matching phonetic alphabet (pinyin) with actual characters. Even if you can touch-type perfectly, you still need to review if the input algorithms have correctly predicted which characters you meant to type and correct homonyms. Maybe now you'll better understand why Chinese people like to use home-developed websites.
When I recently installed Firefox Simplified Chinese edition on a colleague's computer, I realized the search bar came with the mp3.baidu.com search engine as one of the default options. It's kinda weird that Mozilla incorporates that by default. I mean, I don't get isohunt search by default. Are the default search engines in the search bar sponsered ads of sort?
...they do a ton of censoring on behalf of the Chinese authorities so they are an irrelevance.
Google is now filtering in China, Germany (can't search extreme right stuff) and I imagine they are very much filtering in Canada thanks to the ADL's 'hate crime' laws that Canada has been poisoned with where you can't even question the number who died in the Holocaust.
You are about to get such a law in the US; thirty years in prison 'for crimes of Hate'.
Do a Google search while you still can for this query:
ADL 622 hate crime congress
Hold on, I think I need to put that differently...
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
By Elaine Kurtenbach August 31, 2005
Ah, Slashdot. Timely as always.
Baidu (and 3721, and all other bigger Chinese search engines) all have spyware disguised as helpful utilities. That's why they're popular, and generally, once you used one search engine and installed their utility, you're forced to use that site permanently.
This is a bit of a moot point considering Google acquired a minority stake in Baidu back in 2004.
Simpy
The headline is kind of misleading. Only tells half the story, anyway.
If you look at the original report, though Baidu has a greater overall market share (maybe because of the pirated mp3 search someone mentioned earlier), Google is well ahead of Baidu amongst high income and highly educated folks.
They're the kind of people that advertisers will pay big bucks to reach, especially in China, where the majority of people don't have much spending money.
So, atm, Baidu might have more users, but Google should be able to make more money.
Yahoo Japan and goo provide far better searching of Japanese sites than Google. As someone used to using nothing but google for English and French language searches, I find it pretty shocking just how bad google's Japanese results are.
I hope we can rely on this data...
I tried a couple songs, and they were low quality. WMA, mono, etc. No thanks.
Between Google and Baidu, which is truly the lesser of the two evils?
We always allude to "our" search engines because they don't suffer the same fate as Chinese web-produce - massive censorship. One just has to search Baidu for Tianamen Square Massacre. There are 3 (pro-Chinese) results. This is unlike Google that provides over 750 results for the same search term.
But then, Google isn't much better. One just has to look up Google for anything that could contrive the plans of a business, and the corporate entity will use the DMCA to somehow ban the disfavourable content.
Of course, I'd pick Google anyday. But it's hypocritical to state that Baidu is this horrid entity due to its censoring, when in fact this is common practice over here.
If you go to baidu.com and click MP3, you actually get to search for MP3s!!! No, no need to call captain obvious, I get why you're rolling your eyes.
Seriously though, I "baidued" jackson and I fond real honest to goodness songs of michael jackson, mp3 encodes available via http! It's like being in 97 all over again!
What if it was driven by self-interest yet still factual? Since when does a study driven by self-interest necessarily preclude fact? Sure, it may be more likely to be wrong, but the two are not mutually exclusive.
There's a Chinese saying about learning: it is like a leaf in the stream; if it does not move forward, it will be swept back. Google's managing to hold on to market share is a nontrivial achievement.
That said, there's a "them that has, gets" mechanism at work here. Just as we will see when Vista's out, user inertia is strong. Baidu may have its work cut out for it.
ICQ: 28651394 = AIM/MSN/YIM: hsuwh = www.livejournal.com/~banazir
Who else here did a Baidu search for "democracy"?
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
There are simply no comparison between Google and Baidu. Google still try to do everything correctly, while Baidu think more fitting for the Chinese Culture, for example. If you type in the name of the singer and the song title, Baidu is willing to lead you to dozen of direct MP3 link to the download of that song without even touching any other site at all. There are simply no way Google can do that. The only reason Google will lose to Baidu is because Google can't have a fair fight with Baidu.
As posted by another anonymous poster who was reduced to a 2 (I'm sure this one will too because this site is run by Nazi's)
China allows Google to be used to search but when attempting to click on links or cache's from Google you have problems.
Baidu allows you to click through without any issues, but is mostly censored. So If you're doing a search for COMMUNISM and CHINA, most likely you'll be brought to a nice propaganda site about Communisims superiority over Democracy rather than history untethered and nuetral.
"Google is often censored (Score:2, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05, @12:05AM (#13481079)
Parts or the whole of Google and GMail are often blocked entirely or contents censored when accessed from behind China's Great Firewall. Reasons for this could include a combination of censorship of ideas and favoritism toward Baidu and other local companies.
Baidu also contains features that Google cannot do, like their very convenient MP3 search. This may be a strong reason why they are favored by users. Even users outside of China are realizing this.
"
I lived in Beijing that last 20 months. Lots of times google was either being blocked or was offline. It was worse with google's specialized services like news.google.
I'm sure that the gov't is mandating educational institutions use something other than google as a home page when the browers starts up.
Remember, in a fascist oligarchy there is no true capitalist supply and demand. It makes no sense to even bother to try to figure out what is going on in that distorted economy.
Peace, or Not?
Everyone knows slashdotters never actualy read the article, so why bother linking to it?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
In Soviet Russia, Yandex searches YOU!
I really can't feel sorry for them. I could possibly root for Google's Chinese engine if they didn't cowtow to Beijing's censorhsip regime, but so long as they're both self-censoring, I find myself more in favor of their homegrown competitors because they at least have an excuse.
The poster is right. The chinese service searches for MP3s and provides download links: http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&rn=&tn=baidump3&ct=134 217728&word=beatles&submit=%B0%D9%B6%C8%CB%D1%CB%F 7&lm=-1
I can't think how great these news are for RIAA...
In Soviet Russia search engine finds you!
This is basically off topic, but I've been wondering what sorts of things the great firewall of China actually blocks. Does it blocks SSH tunnels? What about new protocols (like an experimental P2P app or tunneling proxy)? How about well-known circumvention tools such as Tor or Freenet? Just curious to hear from anyone who might have lived or is living behind the wall.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I admit I haven't tried goo, but I have tried Yahoo a number of times, and I've always found that Google gives me better results (yes, in Japanese). Though I admit it's possible I'm subconsciously working around whatever limitations Google may have--come to think of it, ISTR it doesn't consider hiragana and katakana equivalent, which would certainly be a major drawback.
Yandex search engine -- http://www.yandex.ru/ -- always brings better results in Russian web. They search only russian nets and domains and this lets them index everything in Russian. Google will never enter this niche and local search engines will be always better than universal system.
At least they spelled "losing" correctly. Around here you have to take what you can get.
I just went to their site and tried to search for something random. While it pulled up alot of results, when I hit back to search again....I got a reload of the same damned page. What's up with that?
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
http://mp3.baidu.com/ then select "MP3" checkbutton. Enter author or title, get direct links to MP3 downloads. Wish Google had something like this! :D
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The chinese government can be "evil", but it's not AFAIK corrupt (in the takes-bribery sense at least). Makes sense, because the penalty to taking a bribe in China is death (there were some five executions last month IIRC).
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
In China, Engine searches YOU!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Because in Korea, only old people use Google.
Chinese people are proud of their country. This comes as a strange thought to most people who went through university indoctrination in the West
Couldn't resist the swipe?
You realize you've said:
1) being proud of America means you probably didn't go to college
2) the model patriotic citizen in his natural, unbrainwashed state is communist Chinese.
I sort of envy that level of single-mindedness.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
A part of the advantage held by local search engines is that they're less censored and more politically trusted than Google.
And we don't know nothing of performance hit that censorship overhead imposes on Google. Maybe it screwes their indexing (they have to exclude more pages than they'd like to, while the local guys already have developed technologies for automated and neat removal of censored information/sites) or searching procedures.
The Chinese-related features that some guys here mentioned aren't that hard to develop. Sure, it requires time, but in greater China there's a bunch of search engine/software companies that would sell their code cheaply ($100K~1m), I believe.
> Right after we bought suso.com, I noticed that a bunch of people from China were already going to the suso.com address
Maybe they misspelled SuSE?
When Bidu IPOed a few weeks ago on the NASDAQ, it skyrocketed to some insane level. It subsequently fell back but maybe the markets knew that BIDU was going to be big in China. I still think BIDU is mostly hype (I would never pay for an established company that has a P/E of 1000+) but it remains to be seen.
The search engine (eg. google) and internet commerce (eg. ebay) are big battlegrounds in China...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I wish I had mod points... grand parent should have negative points for it's Yahoo comment. Alibaba is indeed not a generic search engine.
As far as I know google is also far from #1 in Korea. I believe http://daum.net/ is #1 there.
Baidu means 100 degree or system, isn't that a play on Google (100 zeroes)?
I've never used the site (until Slashdot mentioned it searched MP3s) but I was reading a discarded magazine in a hostel in Beijing that was comparing the effectiveness of two major search engines' spyware campaigns -- not the morality, just the effectiveness of the business practice -- and just about every public computer I've seen is hosed with programs trying to redirect your query. As far as I know, that's not the kind of game Google plays, but I can't remember if Baidu was one of them.
Side note: Google.com is blocked maybe 10% of the time where I am, that can lose a lot of marketshare
My list of multiplayer
The implication being made was that Chinese people are proud of their country despite what is taught in Western (including American) universities. Thats it. Nothing was implied about being a proud American, or that the "model patriotic citizen" being "communist". America wasn't even mentioned. You are creating meaning where it is absent.
I see that's one possible reading: we are taught that the Chinese resent their oppressive government. It will therefore surprise us that the Chinese have national pride.
Another reading (what I responded to) is standard-fare partisan mudslinging: liberal academia hates America. The phrase "university indoctrination" set me off. It's ambiguous whether we're "indoctrinated" to project our orientation on the Chinese, or lack pride in our own country.
Grammatically, your reading is the correct one, but it makes little sense. "I thought Chinese people preferred Chinese solutions until I went to college"? What's taught in university to make us conclude China has no national pride? If anything, an educated person should imagine the Chinese outlook in a way that's more authentic, less naive and western-centric.
Apologies to parent if I misread him, but I don't see the reasoning.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
You know looking at that baidu search engine I feel like I'm looking at google. Oh wait, it probably is google that some technology leeching chinese firm stole from us. Or maybe some greedy american corporation just gave it away in exchange for more profit. Here's my read. There's nothing extraordinary about china but its cheap labor and lax copyrights. There's nothing extraordinary about American corporation but a lack of loyalty to america and a propensity for overwhelming greed.
The GPL and Creative Commons are two examples. Many independent bands release materials for download to get recognition. Even some large band do too. The Grateful Dead allow fans to copy and trade recordings, but put their foot down on sales.
Don't fall for the RIAA/MPAA party line. If the license or copyright holder says it's OK to copy, then it is OK to copy.
Which company is more successful in the long run depends on which is capable of generating more income. By that measure, Google is probably doing much better than Baidu. There is an interesting comparison from CNNIC: www.cnnic.net.cn/download/2005/2005083101.pdf Two comparisons in particular stand out: 1) Google has LARGER market share for non-student users with income over 1500 RMB (~$200); for those with income over 5000 RMB (~$600), Google 58% vs Baidu 26% 2) Most of those who use Baidu as a secondary engine, use it primarily for MP3s, while Baidu/Google users switch to Google for general web searches and purchasing So Baidu has a much larger base of users who are not planning to spend money. Thus, advertisers are not going pay the same rates as for Google.