China Digital Times

China news tagged with: Baidu (69)

• Chinese Internet Search Firm Baidu Looks Forward to Life after Google

  

  The Washington Post profiles Baidu and the company’s future in the wake of Google’s potential departure from the China market:

  Now investors are betting that Baidu will reap the benefits if Google ends up exiting China over its dispute with the government about alleged cyberattacks on Google e-mail and source code. Since Tuesday, when Google announced that it would stop censoring its search engine even if that meant losing its Chinese business license, Baidu’s stock on the Nasdaq has surged 21 percent to a new high, adding $2.8 billion to the company’s market value in just three days.

  Although investors are happy, China watchers are worried about the political consequences of Chinese Internet users depending too heavily on Baidu for news and information.

  The company has been accused of altering search results for advertisers, by either deleting content or pushing firms’ sites higher up on the search result lists in return for payments. The charge has prompted the company to launch an overhaul of its listings.

  Moreover, as a Chinese company, Baidu has little choice but to comply with government demands for censorship. An industry source familiar with the firm said officials from the Ministry of Industries and Information Technology are stationed at its offices.

  » Read more
  • January 18, 2010 10:48 PM

• Baidu’s CTO Yinan Li Resigns

  

  People’s Daily reports that Li Yinan, the Chief Technology Officer of Baidu, has resigned, ten days after the resignation of the company’s COO:

  According to insider, Baidu CTO Li Yinan will soon will officially announce leaving Baidu for” personal reasons”, but the person did not give out Li’s plans after leaving, while successor for the post is also uncertain.

  As an experienced research and development leader, Li has abundant experience in the information technology industry. Before joining Baidu, Li served as chief telecommunications scientist and vice president at Huawei Technologies, China’s largest private telecom gear maker. In that position, he oversaw the development of 3G mobile chipsets.

  » Read more
  • January 18, 2010 12:17 AM

• Baidu Hacked; Chinese Hackers Retaliate

  

  Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, was hacked this morning and is still inaccessible. From People’s Daily:

  Chinese netizens pointed out that the hackers, who call themselves “Iranian Cyber Army”, changed Baidu’s DNS records, redirecting traffic to another site.

  A Baidu insider told Chinanews.com.cn at 9:40 (GMT+8) that the problem has been basically solved, and that “it will be OK in half an hour.” But the site was still found inaccesible at 10:45.

  See also a post from Danwei with additional links.

  

  Meanwhile, it appears that Chinese hackers (with stilted English skills) have returned the favor by hacking the website of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting University, which is affiliated with Iran’s official news broadcaster of the same name:

  

  See other Iranian websites that has been hacked by Chinese, here and here.
  (h/t @mranti)

  » Read more
  • January 11, 2010 10:03 PM

• It’s Tricky for Wikis and Online Encyclopedias in China

  

  There’s stiff competition for Wikipedia in China with domestic Hudong and Baidu Baike currently outranking the formerly blocked website. Lara Farrar from CNN reports on the Great Firewall, censorship, and the difference in thought on what an online encyclopedia’s got to do in the Chinese online sphere.

  On ranking and reputation systems:

  Hudong.com utilizes a range of social networking functions to attract Chinese internet users, including chat forums, fan groups, short messaging services and bulletin boards. Nearly 100 million Chinese netizens regularly visit online bulletin boards, according to research from China Internet Network Information Center.

  The website rewards members through a ranking system where users are upgraded to a higher status on the site based on the points they earn. Members also can win prizes, like laptops and iPods, for high participation on the site. Baidu Baike has a similar model.

  Wikipedia uses a reputation system to promote its members based on their participation on the website and the quality of the content they contribute. Promotion is subject to peer approval, and the site’s volunteer administrators are elected by the community.

  On censorship:

  Since Hudong’s and Baidu Baike’s business operations are based in China, the companies have little choice but to comply with government policy or face the same fate as Wikipedia.

  “If there is something that the government doesn’t want, we don’t talk about it,” said Pan. “We just follow the law.”

  Which is why in the long run many Chinese Wikipedians say their website will win.

  » Read more
  • October 15, 2009 7:48 PM

• Chinese Tweets: “Send Your Feelings” to Xu Zhiyong Today!

  

  Since legal scholar and founder of Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative) Xu Zhiyong was detained, his virtual existence has also been cleaned up in Chinese cyberspace. His blog on sina.cn.com was completely deleted around 11 am on August 12 and searching his name in Baidu and Google will produce the following error pages:

  

  

  

  Netizens have pointed out that similar search results will appear at the following links as well: Douban group Search, Douban Topic search, Sina Community Search, Sougou, Netease Search, Tom, Qihu Search …    (豆瓣小组搜索，豆瓣话题搜索，新浪社区搜索，搜狗，网易有道，TOM，奇虎搜索……)

  » Read more
  • August 12, 2009 9:12 PM

• Josie Liu: Chinese Netizens “Tomb Digging” to Comment on Urumqi Riot

  

  Not surprisingly, online comments regarding Sunday’s violence in Urumqi, Xinjiang, have been closely watched by China’s Internet censors.  As a result, no open public discussion is currently seen on China-based websites. Baidu.com, China’s No.1 online search provider, has closed down its BBS, or “bar,” for Xinjiang and Urumqi. “We’re very sorry, based on relevant laws and regulations, this bar is temporarily closed,” a note on baidu.com reads. 

  But Chinese have their way of getting around the censorship. Numerous posts could still be found in other “bars” on baidu.com. On other popular public discussion websites such as tianya.com, netizens are using a practise called “tomb digging,” in which they dig up posts about Xinjiang or Urumqi originally posted in the past–back to as far as 2006–and add comments about the July 5 incident. On tianya.com, for instance, there are several posts regarding Xinjiang, but their headlines shown on the main list contain no words relating to the latest violence. If one bothers to click on those posts and view the last page of comments, however, one could see newly added comments about the incident on Sunday. These “tomb digging” posts are changing rapidly, as online censors keep deleting them while netizens keep digging up new ones. 

  Nonetheless, those who seek truth about the incident might be disappointed by the posts, since most of them, as of the time of this blog post, are comments from outsiders instead of first-hand accounts of what has happened. These comments express concerns, anger and sadness regarding the violence, as well as condemn Internet censorship.

  Some of the comments (in Chinese) could be found on Baidu tieba here, and here, Cat898, Tianya BBS here and here. See also Xinhua News Agency’s version of the story and  CNN’s version of the story.

  Read also AFP’s report: Savvy Internet users defy China’s censors on riot:

  State-run China Central Television showed its first images of the violence just before midday Monday — more than 12 hours after footage began circulating on the Internet.

  CCTV broadcast images of a woman apparently being kicked as she lay on the ground, protesters throwing stones at police, vehicles on fire, and two young girls with bloodied hands comforting each other.

  But its footage gave a different impression from that given by some of the clips on YouTube that Uighur exile groups said backed their case that the protesters were largely peaceful.

  Footage posted on YouTube showed what appeared to be, at least initially, a peaceful protest, with men and women marching, chatting on mobile phones, sipping bottled water and raising their arms as they cheered.

  Another video on the site apparently taken by low-grade video technology in Urumqi showed police in black helmets leading away handcuffed protesters.

  » Read more
  • July 6, 2009 1:03 PM

• From Baidu CFO Jennifer Li 李昕晢: CCTV Received 40 Million RMB from Us

  

  According to powerapple.com, Baidu’s chief financial officer (CFO), Jennifer Li 李昕晢, recently divulged the inside story on Baidu’s presence in this year’s CCTV’s Spring Festival Evening (春节联欢晚会) in Baidu’s “Q1 2009 Earning Call.” Li affirmed Baidu’s 40 million RMB sponsorship spent on CCTV.

  From “Baidu, Inc. Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript” on Seeking Alpha, 

   

  James Mitchell – Goldman Sachs

  Thanks very much. I think that last quarter you disclosed you spent about 40 million renminbi on the CCTV sponsorship in the first quarter, which I guess you took through your SG&A [Selling, General and Administrative Expenses] line. Is it sensible at all to look at SG&A ex that 40 million or should I assume that if you didn’t spend the 40 million spent, you would have to 10 or 20 or 30 on something else? [...]

  Jennifer Li

  JAMES, it is Jennifer. I will answer your first question. Last quarter we provided guidance that sequential –sequentially we anticipate a 40 million incremental marketing related expense. Yes, CCTV, the majority of that incremental expenditures, we typically also have other annual kind of events that happens in Q1. So Q1, I think if you’re guess is right, if I take out the 40 million related to marketing, the rest of that will be kind of the other, the main SG&A expenses primarily related to work force and the normal activity.

   

  Background:  In Nov. 2008, CCTV exposed a series of reports on Baidu’s ranking bid scandal. Baidu’s share price dropped significantly afterward, and the company has become a target of heavy moral criticism since then.  However, it seems that Baidu soon after started to try to please CCTV. Its CEO, Robin Li, appeared frequently on CCTV’s Spring Festival Evening broadcast.  Its soft advertisements also appeared throughout the program.

  As some counted,  Robin Li appeared 8 times in the broadcast. Each appearance probably cost 5 million. 

  

  » Read more
  • May 2, 2009 8:55 PM

• Baidu’s Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked (1) (Updated)

  

  The first law of Chinese cyberpolitics is “Where there are River Crabs, there are Grass-Mud Horses (那里有河蟹，那里就有草泥马).” According to this “Law of the Grass-Mud Horse,” online censorship will always meet resistance.

  The latest hot item circulating in the Chinese blogosphere is a compressed folder leaked from a Baidu employee. It contains a set of working documents from Baidu’s internal monitoring and censorship department, with details including staff names, their performance records, company contact lists, censorship guidelines, operating instructions, and specific lists of topics and words to be censored and blocked, guidelines of how to search information which needs to be banned, the backend URL, and other internal company information from November 2008 through March 2009.

  Baidu, China’s leading search engine company, has a long history of being the most proactive and restrictive online censor in the search arena. These newly available materials reveal and confirm how censors at the search engines distort and manipulate the search experiences of Chinese netizens. These complete documents are being rapidly spread, and quickly deleted, in Chinese cyberspace. CDT selectively posts some of those working documents here, including the list of filtered keywords (in Chinese). (To read more leaked Baidu documents, please visit the GFW blog.)

  » Read more
  • April 30, 2009 9:40 PM

• Baidu Profit Rises 24%, Topping Analysts’ Estimates

  

  Baidu, China’s home-grown version of Google, reported higher-than-expected first quarter profits. From Bloomberg:

  “Organic Internet user growth, government stimulus plans and Baidu’s brand campaign on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala are major reasons for the upside,” Ming Zhao, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, wrote in an April 23 report. He has a “positive” rating on the stock.

  It’s also interesting to note that according to Xi Guohua, vice minister of industry and information technology, China added 16.2 million Web users in the first quarter.

  » Read more
  • April 27, 2009 7:56 PM

• Welcome to China’s Parallel Cyber Universe

  

  The Straits Times reports on the failure of international Internet companies to compete with local Chinese counterparts:

  In China, most global Internet giants live miserable lives. Auction giant eBay, which once controlled as much as 90 per cent of the China market, was thrashed so badly by Taobao that it shut its main China website in 2006. Social networking titan Facebook is ranked a poor 55th in terms of overall cyber traffic in China. Its faithful China copy, Kaixin, came in 15th.

  In contrast, the Chinese websites have grown into local giants. Sina and Baidu are listed on Nasdaq, and last year, Baidu registered income of 3.1 billion yuan (S$681 million), an increase of 83 per cent from that of the previous year.

  A key reason for the failure of these global big names lies in their defeat in the word-of-mouth contest. Nine of out 10 new search engine users, for example, are recommended to use Baidu, according to Chinese media reports.

  … There is also a darker reality behind the rise of the Chinese copycats. Faced with stringent censorship by the Chinese government, international websites have been blocked for carrying content critical of the communist regime.

  Access to the likes of Google, YouTube and Wikipedia have all been blocked at some point in the last few years by the infamous Great Firewall of China.

  All Chinese companies, on the other hand, are required by state regulators to censor users’ content so as to keep their business licences. The censorship slows down download speed of international sites, driving even more users to the local sites. This political censorship environment, said Professor Xiao Qiang, who runs the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley, has given the Chinese firms a ‘competitive edge’.

  ‘In other words, the Chinese government treats Chinese information and communication technology companies as more ‘politically trustworthy’, which not only forces international companies to adopt local censorship policies, but also fundamentally handicaps them in competition with Chinese homegrown clones in terms of domestic marketing,’ he added.

  » Read more
  • April 20, 2009 11:21 AM

• Banned from Discussion: List of Community Forums Censored by Baidu

  

  Baidu Post Bar 百度贴吧, operated by the China’s leading search engine company, Baidu, is one of the country’s most popular online communities, where individual discussion communities (“post bars”) are generated by Baidu users based on common search keywords. Through these groups, users can instantly join a discussion thread about the keywords they search on Baidu. Users have established more than 1.2 million Baidu communities. Internet censorship is very strictly enforced in these communities. Hence, some netizens have generated a Wikipedia page to keep a list of all the post bars that have been blocked by Baidu. This incomplete list gives an indication of what topics censors do not want netizens to discuss online. CDT has selected and translated some of them here.

  » Read more
  • April 17, 2009 11:13 PM

• China’s Search Engine for the Elderly

  

  Baidu has introduced a new search engine page custom-made for the elderly. From Wall Street Journal’s Juliet Ye:

  Google may be offering free music downloads in China, but rival Baidu.com has its sights on the country’s untapped audiences.

  Baidu, China’s market-leading search engine, launched a search engine especially designed for older Web users last month, Sina.com reports (in Chinese), the first new search product rolled out by Baidu this year.

  The portal, straightforwardly named “Baidu Elderly Search” in Chinese, offers a bit more than the empty, Google-style layout of the traditional Baidu search page. It features larger fonts and a menu of search selections tailored for a more mature audience, from revolutionary song downloads to online forums on Tai Chi and keeping pet birds, popular pastimes among China’s retirees. The design emphasizes clicking instead of typing in order to help older users who might not find it easy to type Romanized Chinese (or pinyin) to produce characters for their searches.

  » Read more
  • April 10, 2009 3:01 PM

• Google to Offer Free Downloads in China

  

  To compete with dominant search engine Baidu, Google will begin offering a downloads search in China. From David Barboza of the New York Times:

  Google executives said they were responding to the phenomenal popularity of free music downloads in China, one of the few markets where the company lags, by forming an alliance with the music industry, including Sony, Universal Music and Warner Music.

  The search engine company hopes the demand for music downloads will raise Google’s profile in China, which has already overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest Internet market with nearly 300 million users, and also help the company gain market share against its chief rival here, Baidu, the nation’s dominant search engine.

  “This is a huge leap of faith for us,” Kai-fu Lee, the president of Google Greater China, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We hope this will move the landscape to a legal model.”

  » Read more
  • March 30, 2009 11:17 AM

• Baidu’s China Lead Over Google Shrinks After Outcry

  

  In the months following search engine Baidu’s ranking controversy, share prices and web traffic to the site have decreased. Reporting from Mark Lee, John Liu, and Joseph Galante for Bloomberg:

  Baidu, the leading Internet search engine in China, has seen its traffic decline and stock price slump since November, when a state-run television broadcast criticized its practice of displaying paid search results higher than some free ones, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.

  “Until Baidu can clearly demonstrate it has overcome the issues brought up by the negative media reports recently, advertisers will likely pull back spending,” said Steven Chang, chief executive officer at Optimedia China, which buys advertising from Baidu and Mountain View, California-based Google. “Google’s biggest strengths are its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto and the integrity of its technology, and the company should attempt to capitalize on them in China.”

  Since the controversy, Baidu has taken steps to correct problems highlighted in the report on state-owned Chinese television network CCTV. It removed unlicensed providers of drugs and other medical care from its search screens and says the company is redesigning its site so that paid search results are more distinguishable from free ones, though it still co- mingles them.

  » Read more
  • February 6, 2009 2:42 PM

• China 2008: National Brands v.s. International Enterprises

  

  This next installment in the CDT series on important issues facing China in 2008 concerns China’s domestic market. See also previous China 2008 articles: China and the Developing World, Nationalism, Internet Culture, and Identity, Environmental Crisis, The Global Financial Crisis, Revaluation of the Yuan, and Human Rights.

  If we can say that the 2008 Beijing Olympics was a brilliant show in which China tried to market itself to the world, then the Sanlu milk contamination scandal marked the beginning of the post-Olympics period in which China returned to reality. Although the nation is already one of the world’s greatest economic powers with respect to its gross domestic product, there has always been a fear among many Chinese people of an invasion of foreign multinationals. The state has been trying to promote national brands, but, just like Sanlu’s milk, the quality of their products has encountered problems. Among the newly rich and also some less wealthy, the cult to go after foreign brands is still growing, and international brands still dominate, especially in the high-end technology market where Chinese national brands have always had difficulties with their lack of innovation.

  CDT has been tracking several events in China’s post-Olympics domestic market where Chinese customers face tough choices with respect to national and international brands.

  The first event started with Microsoft’s attempt to attack piracy, which began with its lawsuit against Hong Lei, the developer of “Tomatolei,” the most widespread pirated version of Windows XP in China. Hong Lei was quickly put in jail in September. Then in October, Microsoft launched its controversial WGA patch update which black-screened pirated Windows XP users’ desktop backgrounds every hour. As a result, this move triggered an eruption of anger and discontent from Chinese netizens toward Microsoft. However, the anger could not solve the problem. The state encourages people to switch to the open source platform Linux, but for the majority of ordinary users, there are not too many alternatives but to continue to use pirated versions with “black screens” or simply not install the update as the official prices of authentic versions are still fairly high for them.

  The second hot topic was the news, “Jailed Customer Faces Large International Enterprises.” Two years ago, ASUS accused Huang Jing, a female college undergraduate, of extortion as Huang asked ASUS for $5 million so she would not publicize problems with her ASUS laptop computer. Huang was put in jail for ten months and was finally released for insufficient evidence. The news became heated this November as Huang got reparations from the state and started to countersue ASUS for selling defective products and putting its customer in jail.

  The Taiwan-based ASUS soon became a target of angered online criticism as many people had experienced frustration with consumer rights protection in China. (However, international brands are usually considered more reliable.) The event seemed to become just another case in which netizens played the role of justice against civil rights abuse. However, as the discussion garnered more people’s attention, some netizens pointed out that Huang’s partner and agent, Zhou Chengyu, was actual a notorious online second-hand laptop reseller who had tricked sellers and buyers many times. As more details were later revealed by the Chinese media and also ASUS, Huang and her partner looked more and more suspicious. Some netizens have quit the campaign against ASUS as they found little justice to fight for. Many are still in the battle as they have more distrust toward the alienated ASUS despite all the negative news about Huang Jing. However, very few have shown their support toward ASUS.

  The Baidu scandal somehow reflects another side of Chinese consumers. Baidu was once thought of as a successful model of Chinese native brands. It has been constantly dominating China’s search engine market, surpassing the international search engine giant Google as it was once considered to produce better relevant search results for Chinese customers then Google. However, due to suspicion of its guilty involvement in the Sanlu scandal as well as its later bid-ranking scandal, which unfolded in November, it has become a new target of online criticism largely driven by netizens’ general anger toward internet control. The native Baidu is probably going to lose Chinese customers’ trust if it does not change its strategy in the near future, as many netizens have already declared to not use Baidu products anymore. In contrast, Google has recently become exceptionally favored by many Chinese netizens although it also exercises some Internet control in China but only in the political sphere.

  Just like in many developing countries, there is a general hostility toward foreign things in China as people tend to regard foreign factors as the causes of many domestic problems. The custom has a very complex historical origin and can be traced back to as early as the Boxer movement in the late Qing Dynasty. Many people always suspect that there is some western conspiracy behind their misfortunes. For instance, in the Microsoft case, some netizens suspect that it was Microsoft’s “conspiracy” to first let pirated versions of Windows XP occupy the Chinese market and sweep out native software. Now Chinese people’s daily life heavily relies on Window, so it has started to kill pirated versions and become a monopoly. Similarly, ASUS got alienated as there is a general suspicion (with the state’s tolerence for political reasons) that Taiwan-based corporations have done many unethical things in mainland China such as in the 2006 Foxcoon case and 2007 Xiamen PX case. For the same reason, Google got alienated too when it first entered China in 2005.

  It is also believed that supporting national brands will somehow help solve problems. Nationalists even take their claims further to deny foreign products as a means to help their nation. (See the 2008 Carrefour boycott, and the anti-Japanese movement in 2005.) According to a recent study, Nationalism plays a very important role in making Chinese customers’ decisions.

  However, some people sometimes find little moral ground to support their sentiment. After the milk contamination scandal was fully revealed, many completely lost their trust in domestic milk companies, many of which were once national/local pride while the New Zealand company Fonterra won the respect of many Chinese. In the Microsoft case, some netizens also doubted whether they, as pirated Windows users, have any moral ground to condemn Microsoft. Similar things also happened in the ASUS case as some netizens pointed out that Huang Jiang and her agent are too greedy, and also ASUS wasn’t responsible for jailing Huang Jing (but the state was).

  They also find that sometimes some national brands are just not worthwhile for them to support. Some national companies lack an adequate business ethical code as they only know how to make profit but have little concern for their users’ experience. After people found that Baidu used its political advantage to make a profit in business, many of them have turned to Google as its “Don’t Be Evil” motto now has become more appealing to them. Also, in response to Microsoft’s anti-piracy effort, there was also this news that Nanchang city forced all internet cafes to replace pirated operating systems with Red Flag Linux, a Chinese-made Linux system. However, the one-time forced installation fee is RMB 5000 (approximately $725, which is far higher than a reasonable price for a Chinese small business) while Red Flad Linux is in no way better than any other open-sourced versions of Linux. (See the artcle “The World’s Worst Way to Market Linux.”) It seems like local protectionism, and besides offering native companies easy money to make, does not really help them build their products better.

  In the age of globalization, Chinese customers have experienced a difficult dilemma between national brands and foreign multi-national brands, which will probably continue to be a big theme in China’s future economical development.

  » Read more
  • December 11, 2008 6:35 PM

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