Baidu: China's Leading Search Engine
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Case Code: BSTR293 Case Length: 19 Pages Period: 2002-2008 Pub Date: 2008 Teaching Note: Not Available |
Price: Rs.300 Organization: Baidu.com, Inc. Industry: Internet and E-Commerce Countries: China Themes: Innovation, Growth Strategy, Emerging Markets |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Excerpts
Google's Loss is Baidu's Gain
According to some industry watchers, one of the reasons for Baidu's rapid growth was, surprisingly enough, its competitor Google. Google began operating in China in September 2000 and offered millions of pages in the Chinese language. It gained popularity owing to its simplicity and ability to carry out searches effectively...
Secret of Success
Baidu positioned itself as a Chinese language search engine which allowed users to find information, products, and services using Chinese. It was a challenging task for it because of the complexity of the Chinese language. To make search easier for users, it introduced the 'pinyin'search in 2001 that allowed users to type in Chinese keywords using English alphabets when the user was not sure of a written form of a keyword. This gave relevant results and made Baidu's search reliable...
Key Products and Services
At Baidu, fifty percent of the products were developed as part of a Research and Development (R&D) strategy with the aim of generating revenue through sales of ads by placing them in the search results. The remaining were developed based on users'requests and the trends in the market. All of Baidu's products were search related and were categorized into web search - that included web pages, advanced search, snapshots, translation, spell checker, stock quotes; Baidu News - which provided local, national, and international news by displaying links to related headlines; Baidu Image Search - which enabled users to search for images on the Internet;...
Partnerships
As China's Internet market grew rapidly, there were plenty of opportunities for growth. The Chinese paid search market grew to US$690 million in 2007. Piper Jaffray forecast that the markets would pass US$1 billion by 2010...
Looking Ahead
The majority of web surfers in China preferred Baidu as their primary search engine as it offered a variety of features and a more stable connection than its competitors. Analysts felt that Baidu's rise in China was mainly due to the fact that it obeyed the local laws and was in the government's good books. It was only when the government blocked access to Google that Baidu had registered a sudden increase in the number of users and moved up in the rankings, they pointed out...
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Market Shares in Chinese Search Engine Market*
Exhibit II: Baidu: Main Investors
Exhibit III: Internet in China: Key Regulations
Exhibit IV: Baidu's Stock Price Chart
Exhibit V: Baidu's Consolidated Financial Statements
Exhibit VI: Products/Services of Baidu
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