Thought this article, taken from the Sunday New York Time's business section, was very relevant to the discussion of search capabilities from last class (and several of the other posts on Google vs. Yahoo's search capabilities).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/business/yourmoney/17baidu.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business
This article provides an overview of baidu.com, which is China's #1 search website. This is notable because China is the only country where neither Yahoo nor Google has a #1 position in the search marketplace. Baidu.com is the #4th most trafficked website in the world. This is particularly impressive given that the Chinese government regularly censors website content.
Baidu was started by Robin Li in 1999, at which time he was working for Infoseek and frustrated by Disney's commitment to search capabilities. Then, in September 2001, Baidu started its own search website, baidu.com. Baidu allowed advertisers to bid for space, even in advance of Google, and allowed customers to pay by clickthrough rate.
The article mentions that Baidu caters to a different audience than Western Internet companies because the Chinese are far more interested in entertainment than news, books or car rental rates. “The fact is 70 percent of China’s Internet users are under the age of 30,” says Richard Ji, an analyst with Morgan Stanley. “Most of them are single, only children. They’re looking for entertainment.”
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