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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?
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.
Ching chang Baidu chong.
That sounds much better than
Ching chang Google chong.
It's all about how it sounds in its native language.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
So basically both Americans and Chinese fall for the old "patriotism" propaganda concept. In moments like this I ask myself if we here in Germany are the only ones that learned something from WW2.
Linux is not Windows
Proud of country != Proud of country's government.
They are proud of each other, their accomplishments, and etc, and it is not dampened by their form of government.
Yes, I'm chinese, but I'm Canadian, so I'm not exactly propaganda-filled.