Baidu is the top Chinese language search engine in the world. The story of its evolution starting in Silicon Valley shows that at the start of this millennium the American dream now knows no international borders. It is enterprising: the search engine can combine Chinese and English keywords. The choice of the name Baidu is in itself both fascinating and instructional.
Baidu - A Passionate Founder and a Unique Name
The founder of Baidu is Robin Li. In 1998 Mr. Li was a frustrated Staff Engineer working in Silicon Valley, according to the New York Times. He was passionate about search and determined to succeed. One year later 1n 1999, Mr. Li set up his own search company in China and called it Baidu. The New York Times reported in September 2006 that Baidu was worth $3 billion and was the “fourth most trafficked website in the world”. In October 2010 the Alexa the Web Information Company reported that Baidu was sixth.
The choice of the name Baidu is very apt in the Web 2 era where user contributions are personalising and energising the web. According to the Baidu website, Baidu means “hundreds of times” and is based on an 800 year old Song Dynasty poem which compared the search for retreating beauty amid chaos to the search for “one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles”. Calling the search engine Baidu almost poetically anthropomorphises the software, suggesting an ability to empathise with the searcher.
Baidu - a Smart Search Engine With Empathy
Users of internet search engines are constantly using the engine “hundreds of times”. The problem is that search engine results throw up too much data and not enough information that is useful to the searcher. Sometimes the plethora of data borders on chaos. This is why search engines are evolving into tools that are intuitively sensitive to the needs and interests of the searcher. Again, origin of th name Baidu suggests that help and understanding are close by to help searchers to really find what they need despite the almost limitless amount of data floating in the cloud.
The New York Times reported Mr. Li making a breakthrough for the search software when he developed what he calls “link analysis”, which ranked website popularity "based on how many other websites had links to it”. According to the Baidu website searchers can skip between searching with English words and Chinese characters. To eliminate the need to skip, Baidu gives the searcher the option of a “phonetic” or “pin-yin” search which accepts “Chinese keywords using English alphabets”. This way, Baidu shows it understands the challenges of cross cultural searching.
Following Baidu’s journey will be very interesting. Baidu is culturally sensitive and has cutting edge third millennium software. It is sensitive to users’ needs. Add to this the fact that China is a major economy and the future of Baidu looks both promising and facinating..
Sources
- The Rise of Baidu (That’s Chinese for Google) – Article in the Online New York Times on 17th September 2006 – Site accessed 13th October 2010. This is an excellent article.
- The Baidu Website – Site accessed 13th October 2010
- Alexa the Web Information Company – Site accessed 13th October 2010
John Bartels - John is a Lawyer (retired). A qualified Attorney, Notary Public and Conveyancer John has a BA,LLB from the University of Cape Town, South ...
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