Baidu vs. Google

NY Times has a very interesting article on the Chinese search engine Baidu. The article tells the incredible Baidu story, on how Robin Li, a then frustrated staff engineer, with a passion for search, at Infoseek started Baidu in China 1999.

According to NYTimes, although Baidu has a market value of $3 billion and operates the fourth-most trafficked Web site in the world, some analysts question whether Baidu can withstand competition from Google and Yahoo, which possess superior technology and global work forces.

Richard MacManus, of Read/Write Web,  actually think the question is the wrong way round – and thinks it should be: can Google and Yahoo withstand competition from Baidu, in China? Richard then goes on and actually cites me, as a person who should know whether Googles technology is better..

For whatever it is worth,  I believe the question is right put either way. While Baidu still performs slightly better with regards to Chinese search, and Baidu still leads by far (62.1% vs. 25.3%) on the Chinese search market, Google is really investing aggressively on search in China and can attract very talented people (and give them an offer they can’t refuse) including people from Baidu. Talent and know-how can to a certain extent be bought, but the question is if that will be enough to bridge the gap?

Perhaps in the end, not everything is about technology , like Richard rightfully points out. Localization seems to be the key (see Jake Ludington's recent post on "Google loosing ground on Chinese search" ).

Comments

[Richard MacManus]

Thanks Netanel for the extra info, you certainly have much more knowledge than me on this matter. It's interesting reading the english Chinese blogs on how Google has made localization mistakes, but then as you say Google can easily turn this around. It'll be interesting to watch what happens.