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Google Falling Behind Baidu in China? Hogwash

The recent internet marketing press that Google has fallen behind in China is quite a boatload of garbage. Google is just fine in China.

Baidu is giving Away Free MP3's and Making Napster Look Tame.

Google will grow as China's business economy grows. The explosion in China is still months away and google's China revenues will increase in sync with this growth.

This story below is typical fare about Google possibly dropping the ball in China.

Our comments are wrapped within this less than acccurate viewpoint especially considering Baidu is promoting illegal file sharing music, video, and game downloads at this time.

A survey by a Chinese internet research firm (????) has found that Google is losing market share to its Chinese rival, search engine Baidu, which apparently boosted its user base in Beijing in the last six months by 10.8 percentage points and now accounts for 52 percent of China's keyword search marketplace.

Google's share of China's keyword search market has remained flat at 33 percent according to the Beijing-based China Internet Network Information Center.

The survey found that, combined, Google and Baidu held 80 percent of the market in Beijing and Shanghai, and 75 percent in Guangzhou. The three cities account for nearly 100% of Chinese internet use. ( with Illegal downloads readily available we expected higher market share gains for Baidu.)

Six months ago, Google held the largest market share in the three Chinese cities covered by the survey.

Baidu has a 43.9 percent market share in Shanghai, compared with 38.2 percent for Google. In Guangzhou, Google's market share was 28.7 percent, Baidu's was 48 percent. Yahoo, meanwhile held only a 3.7 percent market share overall (no mention of Yahoo's $1 billion dollar cash expenditure/purchase of Chinese market share by recently investing in alibaba.com China's ecommerce ebay twin)

Chinese rivals Sohu.com and Sina Corp. claiming a 4.6 percent and 4.0 percent respectively. Baidu's entertainment content, including MP3 downloads (ILLEGAL), is popular in China (Napster was quite a hit in the states a couple of years ago also), while Google is most frequently visited for enterprise products, business opportunities (is this not, where the real money in China lies?), transportation services and travel searches.

Google tends to attract high-end users who are well educated and have relatively high incomes (upwardly mobile and affluent is this a bad thing?); Baidu is favored by students (with less discretionary income seeking free, illegal, entertainment content), who account for a large part of China's search population, according to the report. Some 40-50 percent of Baidu users are students, the report said. (the report neglected to state that 90% of Baidu's activity is illegal file sharing downloads!).

China's Internet population hit 103 million by June, second only to the United States. Google owns 2.6 percent of Baidu (is this losing out? or is Google allowing a subsidary as much room as possible to grow market share while they ramp up their new China business enterprise office?. Also if google posted links to copyright and trademarked protected MP3 downloads on their site the feds would be roping off the Mountain View, California building within 24 hours).

The Baidu name (www.baidu.com) in Chinese stands for: searching for one's dream while confronted with life's many obstacles. (yes, especially the cash register obstacles at the local music or video store).

Is baidu (www.baidu.com) promoting illegal file sharing music downloads in their top nav?

(you be the judge...somebody email metallica...we just closed out on an illegal music download, and also a super nintendo rom download...now wonder baidu is so popular with these chinese college students. Hey American college students get out of your confining university music portals and check baidu out...they give the old Napster a good name! Is Napster back in business in Shanghai?)

Many Silicon Valley insiders feel Baidu is only days away from being shut down.