China's Largest Search Engine - Baidu

As we see the world map in class, Google has the highest market share in most countries in the world except a few countries which include China, Japan and Russia. In China, Baidu is the largest search engine. Baidu has around 70% market share and Google has around 20% market share in China. Baidu functions in a similar way to Google, including its search engine and advertising methods. Baidu offers many services, including a Chinese language-search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable, keyword-based discussion forum (similar to Wikipedia).

Baidu gets a lot of criticism for being a Google copy-cat. At first glance, it’s easy to see why:

Its interface is extremely similar. Too similar to Google’s. However, do not be fooled. The real meat of a search engine is the engine itself and any Chinese internet user will tell you that Baidu provides the best results for Chinese queries. This is why in mainland Chinese circles Google’s leaving the mainland market was neither surprising nor of great significance. When Google finally closed down its mainland China site (it now redirects to the Hong Kong site), most Chinese people saw it as Google admitting defeat in the presence of a superior product. Perhaps the real feat of digital marketing was Google’s ability to influence western media in portraying it exclusively as a human rights/freedom of speech issue.