Google and Baidu

It is no doubt that Google is the best internet search engine in the world. But in China, Google doesn’t play well as it only occupied 27.1% while Baidu, the Chinese local search engine, had 61.8% market share in 2008. I’d like to compare the difference between Google and Baidu from marketing strategies and functionality perspectives to analyze why Baidu run better than Google in China.
Baidu focused on search engine for Chinese language and get advantage compared with Google’s search engine in Chinese. That’s one of key reasons why Baidu played better than Google in China. But after Google improved its technologies, the tech gap between Google and Baidu is more and more small. The current difference between their searching results is more caused by their different perceptions than by their technologies. The search result of Baidu are more entertainment and Google are more formal. For example, when searching 纽约(New York), the content of the first page in Google are all about Wiki, news and embassy of New York while in Baidu are not only Wiki but also Gangs of New York, New York travel, and Hailer New York life insurance. Thus, more young people and students use Baidu while more write-collars use Google.
Baidu provides many successful products, such as Baidu encyclopaedia, Baidu TieBar similar with BBS, which attract lots of users. It seems Baidu plan to develop network community business in terms of its huge number of user base. But Google still focus on improving its core business, search engine in China.