Last week, executives from the Chinese search engine Baidu flew to the United States to meet with Facebook in their Silicon Valley offices. While the trip was kept quiet, and Baidu representatives have yet to comment publicly, both Chinese and U.S. news services have confirmed the story. The speculation about whether Facebook will penetrate China’s great firewall abounds.
Last December, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to China, including a stop at Baidu’s offices. Interestingly enough, last week Facebook also opened a new sales office in Hong Kong. While ads for Chinese businesses does not necessarily constitute opening up the 457 million Chinese Internet users to Facebook, it certainly gives the social giant a stronger foothold into the market.
Most revenues were related to online advertising.
Chinese search company Baidu posted Q4 2009 earnings yesterday afternoon. Revenues came in at $184.7 million, up 39.8% from Q4 2008. Net income was $62.7 million, up 48.2% year-over-year.
“The year ended on a positive note as Phoenix Nest’s better than anticipated performance helped us to exceed expectations for the fourth quarter,” said Robin Li, Baidu’s chairman and chief executive officer.
Online ads were responsible for the great majority of revenues, coming in at $184.6 million. 223,000 advertisers ran campaigns on Baidu in the fourth quarter. Revenue per customer was $828, up 23.9% from Q4 2008 but down 3.4% from the previous quarter.
Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr
comScore has just released a study on growth in the global search market in 2009. The study revealed that the U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google Sites retains a commanding position in the global search market.
More than 131 billion searches were conducted worldwide in December 2009, a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute.
Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr
comScore has just released a study on growth in the global search market in 2009. The study revealed that the U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google Sites retains a commanding position in the global search market.
More than 131 billion searches were conducted worldwide in December 2009, a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute.
Chinese search engine Baidu was down for a bit last week, and they’re blaming it on blocked access due to hackers. Users were instead sent to a site where the group “Iranian Cyber Army” was claiming responsibility. Despite the name, there’s no evidence the group has actual ties based in Iran.
Now, Baidu is suing U.S.-based domain name registry, Register.com in the matter. Register.com, of course, says the suit has no merit.
The timing is curious. The suit comes a week after Google threatened to pull out of China if it could not serve up uncensored search results. They also said the GMail accounts of human rights activists were being hacked, and implied that the hacks were conducted by the Chinese government.
Two weeks ago, Baidu announced that its Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Peng Ye, was leaving the company. Now, Baidu is announcing another major resignation.
Chief Technology Officer Mr. Yinan Li. Officially, both Ye and Li left for personal reasons.
“We appreciate all that Yinan has contributed to Baidu and we wish him every success in his future endeavors,” said Robin Li, Baidu’s chairman and chief executive officer.
No replacement for Li has been named.
Baidu’s chief operating officer Dr. Peng Ye is resigning his post, effective immediately. The departure is related to personal reasons and no replacement has yet been named.
“We thank Peng for his contributions to the company over the last two years and wish him all the best in his future endeavors,” said Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li.
That’s not the only change occurring in Baidu’s executive ranks. Haoyu Shen has been promoted from vice president of business operations to senior vice president. Zhan Wang has been promoted from senior director of business products to vice president.
Chinese search engine Baidu is planning to launch a Hulu-like site. The site will offer licensed online video content and be supported with advertising.
The site will be set up as an independent company. Providence Equity Partners, an investor in Hulu, is teaming up with Baidu for the venture.
Yu Gong has been named CEO. Gong was formerly CEO of China Mobile’s 12580 business.
Baidu stock is traded on NASDAQ in the US, who was happy with the news, boosting shares by 1.48% at the time of this post.
via Reuters
Baidu has been selected by China Unicom to provide wireless search for its 3G mobile subscribers. Baidu’s search will be embedded in China Unicom’s 3G phone modules.
”We are very excited to join hands with China Unicom today following our partnership agreement with China Telecom in May,” said Xuyang Ren, Baidu’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.
China Unicom 3G subscribers will be able to access a variety of Baidu search features including web search, Baidu Knows, Baidu Post Bar, image search, news search, and MP3 search. Baidu will also provide search for China Unicom’s wireless Internet sites.
Chinese search engine Baidu has launched a wireless search service in Japan. The beta search service will build upon Baidu.jp including image and video search as well as special features developed specifically for the Japanese audience.
Wireless internet is widely used in Japan. Over 80% of Japanese Internet users log on wirelessly. 3G adoption has reached over 100 million, more than 90% of Japan’s population.
