The biggest difference between the Internet scenes in Silicon Valley and China this year? We’re all still asking when Facebook will go public, while Chinese companies are filing left and right. Part of this is an investor demand to get a chunk of that 400 million person strong and growing Chinese Internet market.
But part of this is cultural. American Internet entrepreneurs are more likely to… → Read More
Bill Bishop, an investor and consultant based in Beijing, joined me via Skype to talk about this white-hot Chinese Interent IPO market, that’s even welcoming unprofitable companies into the Nasdaq. “It’s been a crazy couple months, and it looks like it will be crazier through Christmas,” he says. “The goldrush is back.”
One of the most interesting corners of that goldrush is online video. Between… → Read More
Baidu CEO Robin Li made a rare appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit this afternoon and revealed some interesting information on the extent of his company’s reach. “Baidu answers more search queries in China than any other search engine in any other market, including Google in the US.” → Read More
Rakuten, Japan’s biggest e-commerce company ($10 billion market cap), and Chinese search leader Baidu have today opened a new online shopping mall in China. Dubbed Lekutian (“Happy Cool Day” in Chinese), the launch of the site was announced back in January. Both web powerhouses will invest US$50 million over the next three years in their joint venture. → Read More
Editor’s note: This is a guest post penned by Michael Cole, Managing Director of RightSite.asia, China’s largest online marketplace for commercial and industrial real estate. Cole has also successfully launched, grown and profitably exited from media ventures in China.
After a modest amount of time observing China’s economy it becomes clear that the government likes to arrange organized… → Read More
Back in March I thought that Google pulling out of China would hurt Google’s Chinese employees and shareholders more than anyone. The search engine was a distant number two in the market to Baidu, and many of the people already using Google in China, I assumed, were doing so through VPNs anyway, meaning the government blocking it wouldn’t immediately change much in terms of users’… → Read More
As expected, Chinese search giant Baidu posted strong first quarter results thanks in part to a gain in marketshare from Google. Total revenues in the first quarter of 2010 were $189.6 million, a 59.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Net income in the first quarter of 2010 was $70.4 million, a 165.3% increase from the first quarter of 2009.
In the earnings release, Baidu’s… → Read More
Baidu shareholders are likely loving Google to death right now. The Chinese search engine company’s shares are soaring, surpassing the $600 price mark this morning for the first time since it started trading on the U.S. public markets in August 2005.
Google, in case you haven’t heard, shut down its Chinese search engine two days ago in response to the widely reported cyber attack on Google in… → Read More
Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50 million into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.
The news comes roughly 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users. → Read More
Baidu, the leading search engine operator in China, this afternoon reported blow-out financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009. The company’s Q4 profit rose 48.2% to 427.9 million yuan (approx. $62.7 million), or $1.80 a share. Revenue rose 40% to 1.26 billion yuan, or about $184.7 million, compared to the same period a year ago.
In the wake of Google’s stand against censorship of its… → Read More
Chinese search leader Baidu and Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce player, have announced an agreement to jointly invest US$50 million over three years in a joint venture to build a huge online ‘B2B2C’ shopping mall for Chinese Internet users.
Under the terms of the agreement, Rakuten will become majority shareholder of the new, yet to be named joint venture (51%) with Baidu owning the remaining… → Read More
There’s something going on over at Baidu, the leading search engine provider in China. A mere ten days after the company’s chief operating officer Peng Ye bailed for ‘personal reasons’, Baidu this morning announced that chief technology officer Yinan Li is also calling it quits.
For personal reasons.
Li was with the company only for 14 months, and his departure was announced in a two-sentence… → Read More
Most publications, including us, noted yesterday that if Google has to lose its $600 million in revenues from China by pulling out of the country, then at the very least it’s won a lot in brand and integrity points by the public, English-language and scorched-earth way they did it. Google’s halo is so bright that even now Valley thought leaders are aghast at the idea that a publicly-traded… → Read More
Lots of interesting commentary in the wake of Google’s bombshell blog post from yesterday about its decision to stop censoring its search results and possibly withdrawing from the Chinese market all together after being hit with severe cyber attacks on its core infrastructure. You can follow the conversation on Techmeme, but there’s one item that just hit the news aggregator that I felt compelled… → Read More
Chinese Internet search giant Baidu this morning announced plans to set up a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users.
Reuters earlier this week caught wind of the company’s plans to launch the Hulu-like destination site, and also reported that Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners was going to have a significant stake in… → Read More
[Netherlands] I’m not sure if this qualifies as domain name squatting but the motivation is the same.
Dutch web design company Baidu Europe – not to be confused with the Chinese search engine of a similar name – has put their domain names, brand names and trademarks up for sale on eBay. The starting bid has been set at $250,000 but the company is aiming for a much bigger payout of $1.7 million… → Read More
Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Culture (MoC), warned that it would strengthen checks and policing of online music content. The MoC said that search engines, which have been a source of pirated music in China, can only provide search information for tracks from legitimate music companies. This move may pose as a serious problem for China’s most popular search engine Baidu, which has long faced… → Read More
Google China has taken the beta label off its dedicated, free MP3 search engine now that the local Google branch announced deals with all four major music labels (Warner, Universal, EMI and Sony) at a press conference earlier today. The website, which had been in beta for over a year, can be found here, or you can try the translated version (note that you won’t be able to download or listen to… → Read More
What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). … → Read More
Google keeps gaining search market share in the U.S., but its global dominance is not as great as previously indicated. Last night, comScore released its search market share and query growth numbers for July and Lehman Brothers reported the numbers in a note this morning. Here are the main search market share percentage numbers in the U.S. from comScore: Company—–July search… → Read More
Chinese search engine Baidu worked an image of presidential candidate Barack Obama into their home page logo today, as well as a tribute page about the candidate. From what we can tell it’s very rare for Baidu to dedicate its home page to an individual, and no other U.S. presidential candidate has been so honored. In short, this is an endorsement of the candidate. Given the tepid relations… → Read More
The major record labels have gone in for a second round of listing pirated songs is bad legal action against leading Chinese search engine Baidu and smaller player Sohu. Universal Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Hong Kong-based Gold Label Entertainment lodged the new suit Monday, asking a Beijing court to order Baidu and Sohu to remove links to thousands of sites that carry pirated music. A… → Read More
Google is set to challenge China’s largest search provider Baidu by offering free legal music. The success of Baidu has long been credited to the search engine providing music search from its front page, but much to the lack of amusement of record companies, the music found by Baidu is nearly all pirated. Baidu fronted a Chinese Court in December, and won the day with a ruling that Baidu did… → Read More
While Google dominates the top slot in search both in the U.S. and worldwide, with a global search market share of 62 percent, there is still a lot of elbowing going on below, especially when you look beyond the U.S. In a comScore ranking of the top-10 global search engines as measured by number of searches during the month of December, 2007, Yahoo comes in at a distant No. 2 with only 13 percent… → Read More
Chinese search giant Baidu has lost its CFO under mysterious circumstances, but has won a major piracy case. In a statement, Baidu said that CFO Shawn Wang had died in “an accident” whilst on holidays in China. No further details on the death were provided. Baidu shares dropped $9.07 following the news. On a more positive note a Beijing appeals court ruled that Baidu was not guilty of… → Read More
Google is being investigated for tax evasion by the Chinese Inland Revenue Department following a tip off from an “informant” alleging wrong doing. According to local reports, the investigation into Google includes evasion of business and personal tax, and tax on employee options. At least some of the investigation relates to how Google has previously treated transactions from Chinese… → Read More
Google is testing a new home page for Google.cn that completely abandons Google’s clean uncluttered look for something that looks more like Yahoo. Google Blogscoped notes that this may just be a test and might not become the main Google portal in the worlds second largest internet market, but even as a test it’s a big change. Google has struggled to gain marketshare in China against… → Read More
The IPO of Alibaba.com hit the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Tuesday (local time) with a big increase over its initial offering price. Alibaba.com is a spinoff from the Alibaba Group, the company that owns Alipay, Taobao.com and Yahoo China and is 40% owned by Yahoo. Applications for shares in the IPO were 256x the amount of stock available, 858.9 million shares or 17% of the company. The IPO price was… → Read More
Further to our earlier story on visitors to Google Blogsearch being redirected to Baidu in China, new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu. Digital Marketing Blog posts that all requests to Yahoo.com and sub-sites are being redirected to Baidu. Google Blogscoped forums indicate… → Read More
Google has done it hard in China. Confined to acting within both local laws and US copyright laws it has failed to take the lead in a market that will have more broadband users that the United States in the next 12-18 months. The NASDAQ listed Baidu dominates mainland search, in a big way due to its thorough indexing of illegal music and video and related search capabilities, a service that Google… → Read More
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