What Is Baidu?
Baidu is the dominant internet search engine company in China. Its features and services are similar to those of Google, but its focus is on China, where it controls most of the search market.
Baidu censors search results and other content in accordance with Chinese regulations. Google is blocked from mainland China by the nation’s Great Firewall. Baidu Inc. is registered in the Cayman Islands and is listed on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol BIDU.
Understanding Baidu
Baidu is the 6th largest search engine in the world and commanded a share of the Chinese search market above 78% in February 2021, according to Statcounter.1
In December 2007, Baidu Inc. became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.2 According to YCharts, the company had a market cap of about U.S. $70 billion as of late March 2021.
Baidu has a range of consumer features including maps, news, video, an encyclopedia, anti-virus software, and internet TV. The company generates revenue from advertising with a system that is similar to Google’s. Advertisers bid on keywords that will trigger the display of their ads. Advertisers can also pay for priority placement in search results.
Baidu’s competitors are Google Hong Kong, Yahoo! China, Microsoft Bing, and smaller regional players. (Although banned from the mainland, Google is available in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.)
History of Baidu, Inc.
Baidu, Inc. wasincorporated in January 2000 by its creators, Robin Li and Eric Xu. It has grown into a Chinese multinational technology company that provides internet-related services, products, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The company is based in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and internet companies in the world.
Baidu’s App Business
Baidu also has a Global Business Unit, called DU Group or DU Apps Studio that provides apps and services to more than 2 billion active users worldwide. The Baidu App Store and Shouji Baidu host downloadable content and applications, The company’s advertising platform is called DU Ad Platform.
Baidu and AI
Apollo Project is the world’s leading autonomous driving and AI program, operated by Baidu with global partners. Together the project represents one of the largest partner groups with 210 global partners as of 2020.3 Participants include big names such as Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, Daimler AG, ZTE, Grab, Ford, Hyundai, and Honda.
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What Is Baidu?
As mentioned above, Baidu is a huge Chinese tech company specializing in internet services and AI (artificial intelligence).
It is the largest internet company in China and one of the biggest in the world. Since Google is banned in mainland China, most Chinese people use Baidu as their chosen search engine.
25 Fascinating Facts About Baidu You Need to Know
Baidu has a long history of ups and downs, acquisitions, growth, and intrigue.
Here is a list of some of the facts that make Baidu what it is today.
1. What’s Behind the Name?
The name Baidu was taken from a beautiful poem called The Green Jade Table in the Lantern Festival. Written by Xin Qiji (1140-1207), this haunting poem portrays the search for one’s dreams amidst chaotic distractions.
Here are the lines that inspired the name Baidu.
See the connection?
Baidu allows you to achieve a constant search for the ideal.
2. How Is Baidu Pronounced?
The word Baidu is made up of two Chinese characters. Here’s what they look like.
The first character is pronounced “bai.” The second one can be pronounced “do” or “to.”ADVERTISEMENTCONTINUE READING BELOW
Actually, it’s a blend of “d” and “t.”
Baidu means hundreds or thousands of times.
3. Who Founded Baidu?
Although Baidu would grow to stunning heights, its creator actually started small. Born as the only son of two factory workers in Yang Quan, Robin Li didn’t have the capital to start a huge business.
Instead, he studied computer science at Beijing University. After the campus was shut down due to pro-democracy protests, Li moved to Buffalo and earned his master’s degree at the State University of New York.
After his studies, Li got his first job at a company called IDD (a Dow Jones subsidiary). It was during this time that Li created RankDex, a site-scoring algorithm.
In 1999, Li was invited back to China to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the communist regime. It was then that he met his biochemist friend Eric Wu. Together, they decided to capitalize on China’s growing internet industry by starting Baidu.
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4. Baidu Started Off with Silicon Valley Funding
When Baidu came to life in 2000, it caught the attention of major venture capital firms.
With a $1.2 million funding from Integrity Partners and Peninsula Capital, Li and Wu returned to Beijing to launch their project.
It didn’t take long for other venture capital firms to notice them. A few months later, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and IDG Technology Venture invested $10 million in Baidu.
5. Baidu.com Wasn’t Always a Search Engine
Li and Wu originally intended Baidu to be a search service to other Chinese portals. However, things weren’t looking up towards the end of the year.
“The portals didn’t want to pay for (the service),” Lee told Forbes in 2009.
Luckily, they got the idea to launch Baidu as an independent site.
6. Baidu Beat Google to Making Money on Ads
Just like Google, Baidu sported a simple, no-nonsense homepage. However, there was a difference.
Unlike Google back then, Baidu allowed companies to bid on space for ads. By 2004, Li and Wu started making a profit.ADVERTISEMENTCONTINUE READING BELOW
7. Robin Li Is the 35th Wealthiest Person in China
With a net worth of $8.4 billion, Li surpasses wealthy Chinese businesspeople like Dang Yanbao (Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group) and Kei Hoi Pang (Logan Property Holdings).
8. The All-Time High of a Baidu Stock Share Is $284
When Baidu went public in 2005, it opened at $27 a share and closed at $112. Since then, things have gone up and down for Baidu shares.
In May 2019, Baidu’s share price reached a staggering closing price of $284. However, this declined with the onset of the trade war and the decline of the Chinese economy.
Today, a share can be bought at $117.
Here’s a look at Baidu stock share prices from 2005 to 2019 f rom Macrotrends.
Baidu Search is a type of scam that installs on a user’s computer into their browser. Once installed, it will quickly take control of the browser and alter a number of settings which include changing the browser’s homepage, changing the browser’s search engine and provider and making other adjustments to DNS redirections, “page not found” redirection and other browsing related pages. Baidu Search affects the major Internet browsers including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Depending on the browser, a different type of program is installed. In Chrome and extension is added to “manage” and control search and home page assets. In IE, a browser helper object (BHO) is added to control browsing and search. And in Firefox, a plugin or searchplugin is added to force the default search to use the one that Baidu Search decides to add.
If you’re a mobile app developer looking to generate revenue with some easy-to-install ads, Google isn’t your only option. Massive Chinese Web services provider Baidu also offers a free mobile advertising SDK for any developer to integrate into their app with little coding skills required. However, according to a report from antivirus company Bitdefender, hackers could hijack Baidu’s service to do more than just serve ads. A recently discovered security flaw potentially allows hackers execute malicious code through Baidu’s SDK.
Malware in the Middle
“The Bitdefender Research team has found that the Baidu Mobile Advertising SDK implements an update mechanism that is vulnerable to remote code execution via simple man-in-the-middle attacks,” the team said in a statement. To prove this theory, Bitdefender’s researchers created a Proof of Concept attack that successfully, and unfortunately, intercepted data from a device running the SDK on an unsecure communication channel.
