Chinese search engine Baidu confidently outperformed its competitors. It currently ranks 1 in China, 8 in North Korea, 10 in Hong Kong, 15 in Japan, 27 in Taiwan, and 82 in the US. Baidu is as popular in China as Google is in Europe.
Google competitor from China
Baidu is considered one of the largest Internet companies in the world. It was founded in January 2000 by former students Yerik Xu and Robin Li, who graduated in America. They managed to attract about $12 million in investments. Their goal was to create a domestic Internet company that could compete with American "monsters" such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The name literally translates to "a hundred times", "a thousand times" or "countless times". It is taken from the last lines of Xin Qingzi's poem "The Green Jade Table at the Lantern Festival". It says: "Searched hundreds of times in the crowd, suddenly turning, she, she is there, in the dim light of a burning candle."
The poem tells about a man who is looking for his jadedream. According to the developers, the Chinese search engine Baidu symbolizes the constant search for the ideal. In this regard, the name of the search engine is sometimes translated as "dream search".
Gold Shield
Informally, the project is called the "Great Firewall of China" (a play on words, meaning both the ancient Great Wall of China and a network firewall). This is a virtual shield that filters Internet content in China. The development of the project lasted for 5 years. And at the end of 2003, the Golden Shield began its work.
Also, in addition to the "shield", China uses DNS-blocking technology. There is a "black list" of sites, access to which is completely closed. Web pages are filtered by keywords that are indirectly or directly related to state security.
Chinese Baidu, Sogou and Soso are popular search engines not only in their homeland but also in Europe. The same cannot be said about Google, Bing and Yahoo, which are rapidly losing their leading positions in China.
Achievements
How popular is baidu.com? Every day it is visited by about 50 thousand Internet users. It is one of the top 10 most popular and profitable sites on the Internet, second only to such giants as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Wikipedia.
In mid-2006, China's main search engine launched the "Baidupedia" or "Baidu Baike" project. In the first 3 weeks, she bypassed the Chinese Wikipedia and became the leader in the country. Encyclopedia of Baidu is susceptibletotal censorship, like the search engine itself. At the beginning of 2017, it contains about 14 million articles. In other words, Baidupedia has more information than the Russian, English, Chinese and German Wikipedias combined.
According to the worldwide ranking of sites (Alexa Traffic Rank), baidu.com ranks 4th in the world. The site index contains more than 90 million graphic files, 800 million web pages and more than 12 million media content files.
In 2013, Baidu, together with the German company Avira, released its own antivirus program Baidu Antivirus.
Company President Zhang Yaqin announced his ambitious plan in 2016. In 5 years, he intends to start mass production of cars (self-driving).
Competitors
In China market Baidu undoubtedly leads. According to experts, it is used by 65% to 85% of the population of China. But despite such popularity, this "giant" has competitors: So.com, Sogou.com and Soso.com. These Chinese internet search engines are fighting for customers and dreaming of becoming the leader.
Search engine So.com appeared 12 years after Baidu and now owns 17% of the market. Owned by Qihoo 360, their software is mainly targeted at owners of "pirated" or illegal copies of Windows in China. 360 apps bypass authentication and allow you to install OS updates.
Qihoo is actively collaborating with Nokia and Google on mobile search and plans to expand into European markets. The company recently bought sharesits competitor Sogou, which could increase its market position by 10%.
Chinese search engine Soso.com belongs to the largest Internet service provider Tencent. The company is the creator of such successful projects as WeChat and QQ messengers, owns Riot Games. In mobile search, it confidently ranks second (15% of the market).
Foreign search engines in China
The Bing.com system, despite the support of Microsoft, is not popular in China. It is used by no more than 1% of the country's population and only to search for information on English-language resources.
Due to total censorship, the Google.com search engine refused to work in China. In 2010, the company closed its representative office in the country and relocated to Hong Kong. Google's share in the Chinese market has dropped significantly and currently stands at 3%.
Thanks to the departure of Google, the Chinese search engine Baidu has strengthened its position in the domestic market. And with the opening of the Japanese version, it became the second search engine in the world.
