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?

Comments

Oh Goody

[CunningNickName]

At least there's one country where Ballmer doesn't have to fucking kill Google and Larry Page.

190 to go...

Duh...

[PornMaster]

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*.

Baidu is better than Google in China

[ReformedExCon]

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?

Re:Baidu is better than Google in China

[tksh]

Not to mention that Baidu tends to do better on Chinese queries. A lot of times when I'm trying to find lyrics to some song or some proverb, Google will fail but Baidu will give me results.

Coupled with the MP3 search, image search, discussion board serach, and page caching, it already offers what most people would use Google for. I know I don't bother with Google for Chinese queries now.

At least Google owns

[slobber]

a 2.6 percent stake in Baidu... Is Google hedging its bets to some extent?

Re:At least Google owns

[xiaomonkey]

Only with a 2.6% stake??

I don't know, was yahoo hedging their bets with the 5% stake they had in google?

Article link...

[PornMaster]

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/ap/ ap_083105.asp?trk=top

Does Google care?

[richdun]

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.

I just returned from China

[Therlin]

Most of the computers we came across in China were indeed using Baidu as their start up page.

Just saying...

"English" spelling

[DNS-and-BIND]

Many Chinese people can't spell "google". I mean, what if some famous Chinese site launched in America, and it was called "mienfei.com" or something? Heck, I never liked the name "google" myself, either...it's a silly corruption of a word that was silly in the first place.

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.

MP3 search

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thank God!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Fixed article, maybe

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

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.

Baidu.com

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell does that company have any market share at all? It's in some crazy foreign language or something.

Not for long

[ImaLamer]

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.

Baidu is easier to use when searching in Chinese

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Any Chinese Speakers Here?

[Tuqui]

their about page says "Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.".

Hear something from a Chinese's prespective...

[ID000001]

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.

Re:and maybe suso.cn too

[blackicye]

Hate to break it to you, but your friend is either pulling your leg or ill informed.

Suso means nothing like fast and/or search in Mandarin. The site appears to be some kind of entertainment portal / message board.

And it uses the Google, Baidu and Yahoo China search engines to conduct its searches.

A more likely explanation would be that the existing search site suso.cn was already very popular or heavily advertised in China.

And yes I am a native speaker of Mandarin and several Chinese dialects (Hokkien [Fujian], Henghwa [a Hokkien sub dialect], Cantonese and a little Teochew)

Google goes offline periodically.

[jjn1056]

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.

Re:Google goes offline periodically.

[vidarh]

I think he is making the point that the Chinese form of government is far closer to fascism than to any socialist ideology. Fascism relies on an oligarchy controlling the economy and individuals working "for the good of the state".

Socialism is about putting cooperation over competition for the good of all, and in Marxist ideology a majority rule over a capitalist minority (and the eventual disintegration of the capitalist class which in Marxist ideology would lead to the end goal of communism, where the state whithers away as a means of power)

The problem China faces, that the Soviet Union also faced, was that they quickly descended into an oligarchy once it became clear that the revolutionary movements didn't have the mass support they needed.

It all boils down to both Lenin and Mao believing (mistakenly) that they could gain the support of the peasant populations that would have been needed for a socialist majority rule, and then their and their parties refusal to accept they were wrong.

Unfortunately this is a common theme in most revolutions - the most radical elements tend to also be the ones most willing to use violence to grab and hang onto power in part because they've had to get used to facing opposition that would do anything to get rid of them, and have had to spend a lot of time politically isolated from the mainstream but still keeping their faith in ultimate victory. It happened in the French revolution, it happened in Britain (during the civil wars in the mid 1600's), and it's happened in nearly all the Marxist inspired revolutions.

In nearly all such cases, these regimes paradoxically tend to start applying the same oppressive methods of the regimes they ousted as part of their effort to carry out their programmes of changes that often go much farther than what the general population - even those initially supporting a revolution - would support, and end up transforming into regimes with more in common with their old oppressors than with what they were struggling to become as a result of the fact that they see opposition as counter revolutionaries trying to revert to the old and themselves as liberators, ignoring the fact that these "counter revolutionaries" may very well enjoy as much or greater support than they do (see for example the Bolchevik oppression of the Mecheviks and Social Revolutionaries who managed to grow significant popular support after the Russian revolution).

The result in both the Soviet Union and China were that instead of getting a socialist majority rule nationalising the means of production for the benefit of all, the governments rapidly turned into stale oligarchic structures as the efforts at weeding out counter revolutionary forces quickly turned into an elimination of all opposition - whether or not it enjoyed support from the public - and as a result the nationalised industries quickly came under control of people that were able to put their personal interests first.

Paradoxically, considering these regimes claimed their basis in Marxism, is that Marx specifically warned about this. In "The German Ideology" he stated roughly that unless a revolution would happen in a country well developed enough to fullfill the needs of the masses without need, the "same shit" would happen all over again. And it did - only using different symbols and different language.

The Chinese government can pretend to be socialist all it wants, but given that they never removed the upper class, merely shifted the values around, and for decades have been slowly moving to a capitalist economy and introducing even larger economic differences, that is a rather silly charade.

Re:and maybe suso.cn too

[znode]

I confirm the lawyer. "Su" is the first character of "su4 du4", meaning speed. "So" is the first character of "so1 suo3", or search.

See http://babel.altavista.com/tr?&trtext=speed+rummag e&lp=en_zh, and you should see 4 characters if your browser supports it. Take the first and the third, and that's "suso".

I don't blame blackicye though. I didn't recognize "suso" at first either. Since Mandarin Chinese syllables have 4 inflections (5 if you want to classify short as an inflection), we'd have to mentally run through at least a few combinations before we recognize a phrase.

And yes, I'm a native speaker. Mandarin and Hangzhou dialect.

Re:Which is the lesser of the two evils?

[znode]

You're not getting results because you're not spelling it correctly. It's tiananmen, not tianamen.

Spelled correctly, Baidu shows 777 results. Google gets 50100.

... and then it's obvious that Baidu is censored. Every page on google describes the event, while in Baidu, it leads to a "no page exist" Wikipedia error page. (Either intentionally or accidentally, there's an unpreventable extra quotation mark appended to end of result in Wikipedia (even if you don't use any quotation marks), preventing you from seeing the site.)

And after the two wikipedia error pages, you only get very short snippets. Oh, and the third result got through. I think the reason that it slipped through is that someone cleverly named the thread on a bulletin board "stir fried tomatoes with eggs" in Chinese.