Back in May, Search Engine Watch asked me to write a piece about alternatives to Google[1]. This research was enlightening. It gave me another perspective on the search industry across the global context and how it varies from market to market.
This has prompted a series of more in-depth posts which have helped me speculate how search – even within the Google framework – may well evolve over the next few years. My piece on Ecosia[2] looked at the environmental cost of digital activity and suggested that we might see search leaders work to be more transparent about the ecological ramifications of everyday internet activities right down to individual searches. A subsequent piece on DuckDuckGo[3] celebrated the search tool which puts user privacy before sellable ad data – a USP which is all the more valuable as growing numbers of internet users get tired of creepy online tracking and privacy breaches.
Today we look to Baidu – China’s leading search engine.
The ‘Google of China’
According to Alexa[4], Baidu is the fourth most popular website globally (behind Google, YouTube and Facebook). StatCounter[5] indicates it currently reaches around 70% of search engine users in its home country. That’s a whopping 448 million people if we base user numbers on the latest CNNIC report[6].
Baidu’s similarities to Google are plenty. It dates back to the 1990s, boasts a range of digital products and is currently leading the charge in AI development and self-driving cars. But it is arguable that while Google dominates search in the west and looks likely to continue doing so for some time, Baidu’s dominance in China during 2018