10 Facts About Baidu

Here are the 10 facts about Baidu, the number one search engine in China:

  • Baidu was established in 1999 by Robin Li who previously worked for Infoseek, an Internet search engine in the early years, as an engineer.
  • Baidu’s name is taken from a Song Dynasty poem written a couple of centuries ago that was used to compare the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles.
  • Baidu started out offering search services to other Chinese portals before developing its own stand alone search engine.
  • When Baidu.com, Baidu’s own search engine site, launched in September 2001, many people believed its homepage was a copycat of Google in Chinese, due to its simplicity as well.
  • Before Google launched Adwords, Baidu has already launched its PPC advertising model.
  • Baidu as a company only started to make financial profits in 2004, mainly based on its PPC advertising model.
  • Baidu went public on 5 Aug 2005 at $27 a share on Nasdaq and closed at $122, which was a 354% jump.
  • Baidu faces legal challenges including lawsuits claiming it violates copyright laws on music files, due to its very popular MP3 search.
  • Today, Baidu has a market value of about $3 billion dollar.
  • At the time of posting, Baidu ranks number 4 in terms of traffic according to Alexa rankings, and is the most visited website in China.

Comments

One Response to “10 Facts About Baidu”

  1. fiLi's world on April 5th, 2007 10:57 pm

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