Baidu is NOT the Google: Too Bad

Posted on April 10, 2008
Filed Under China Business, China Internet, GFW |

Chinese Internet search engine Baidu.com (BIDU) has signed a deal with China Netcom (CN) to provide search results on pages when users accidentally mistype or visit incorrect website URLs.

“We are determined to become the leading provider of broadband communications and multimedia services in China,” said Fang Yiming, CNC’s general manager of media business in a media statement. “Our goal is to provide our users with the most convenient, efficient and comprehensive service by coupling our vast customer base with Baidu’s leading technology and market position in search. The synergy between Baidu and CNC will be enormously valuable for all of our customers.”

…Shen Haoyu, Baidu’s vice president of business operations, said the partnership is business-minded: “As we continue to transform Baidu Union from a search and advertising network to a true business solutions provider, Baidu is increasingly lending expertise in search and product design and development of business models to partners. We find these types of partnerships mutually beneficial.”

It’s certainly beneficial to Baidu. How it helps someone surfing is another question entirely. China Telecom has a similar setup, sending users to their vnet portal. But Baidu is not to be deterred from its quest to be all things search to all networked people. Shanghai Daily reports:

PEOPLE will soon be able to use Baidu.com Inc search services through new devices including TV, fixed-line phones, handsets, and wireless networks, China’s biggest online search engine said yesterday.

Baidu, seeking to be different from Google, aimed to be an online community offering all kinds of new functions besides its core search advertising business, according to Piper Jaffray, a United States-based investment bank.

The article has quite a list of Baidu’s efforts to become a “true business solutions provider”:

But wait! There’s more in the pipeline:

All this does not a “true business solutions provider” make. These efforts will help to ensure that Baidu remains the search behemoth in China, but they offer little in the way of solutions for businesses. Google may not amount to much in China, but they have a strong record of innovation that can really impact a business.

Google Apps just made a big step forward with google gears. Users can use the simple word processing offline and then sync the files when connected to the internet. Tools such as google site and corporate gmail services are rapidly maturing.

Add to that the growing list of general internet gee-whizzery applications and tools and it becomes obvious why the google is synonymous with the internet of tomorrow. Baidu isn’t interested. They’re very specific about what they want and don’t want to be:

We know that a lot of interesting things are going on in the Internet space, but we don’t want to lose focus. China’s Internet search industry is only a newly discovered territory. We see vast untapped grounds in our home base and we believe there are still plenty of prizes to be claimed by the best players.

Focus is all well and good, but obsessing about core competency in an emerging net-centric computing environment could lead to a dead end. Google’s focus isn’t searching, it’s innovating. The “next big thing” in information technology has a way of blind-siding established players. By keeping its blinders on, Baidu is setting itself up for a fall.

GFW postscript
The third paragraph in the China Tech News article was interesting. I wonder if Baidu will ever get hauled before a congressional committee and given the yahoo treatment:

It is unclear if Baidu, a company trading in the United States, will also participate in welcoming visitors on pages that are blocked in China. Though they rarely admit to it, some Internet Service Providers in the past have redirected Chinese Internet users to search-related pages when the users attempt to visit websites banned in China.

It’s an interesting thought, kudos to the folks at China Tech News.