Difference between revisions of "Baidu"

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*''[[Wikipedia: Baidu Baike | Baidu Baike]]'', is China's largest online encyclopedia by users; second largest encyclopedia by article count. <ref>''Wikipedia'' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu "Baidu"]</ref>
 
*''[[Wikipedia: Baidu Baike | Baidu Baike]]'', is China's largest online encyclopedia by users; second largest encyclopedia by article count. <ref>''Wikipedia'' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu "Baidu"]</ref>
 
*''Baidu MP3 Search''<ref>https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6MP3</ref> provides algorithm-generated links to songs and other multimedia files provided by Internet content providers. Baidu started with a popular music search feature called "MP3 Search" and its comprehensive lists of popular Chinese music, ''[[Wikipedia:Baidu 500 | Baidu 500]]'', based on download numbers. Baidu locates file formats such as MP3, [[Wikipedia: Windows Media Audio|WMA]] and [[Wikipedia: Macromedia Flash|SWF]]. The multimedia search feature is mainly used in searches for Chinese pop music. While such works are copyrighted under Chinese law, Baidu claims on its legal disclaimer that linking to these files does not break Chinese law. This has led other local search engines to follow the practice, including Google China (Hong Kong), which uses an intermediate company called Top100 to offer a similar MP3 Search service.
 
  
 
*''Baidu Image Search''<ref>https://image.baidu.com/</ref> enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms. <ref>''Wikipedia'' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu "Baidu"]</ref>
 
*''Baidu Image Search''<ref>https://image.baidu.com/</ref> enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms. <ref>''Wikipedia'' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu "Baidu"]</ref>
 
*''Baidu Video Search''<ref>https://v.baidu.com/</ref> enables users to search for and access through hyperlinks of online video clips that are hosted on third parties' Websites.
 
  
 
* ''Baidu Search Ranking''<ref>https://www.asiapacdigital.com/china-digital-services?gclid=Cj0KCQiA1pyCBhCtARIsAHaY_5fUe8zSkdYMQ9y9yLMAFQrcPUg289Hl0GZdF10ZUpaXLxBn_YNASw8aAop1EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds</ref> provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.
 
* ''Baidu Search Ranking''<ref>https://www.asiapacdigital.com/china-digital-services?gclid=Cj0KCQiA1pyCBhCtARIsAHaY_5fUe8zSkdYMQ9y9yLMAFQrcPUg289Hl0GZdF10ZUpaXLxBn_YNASw8aAop1EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds</ref> provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.

Revision as of 09:29, 26 March 2021

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Baidu
Baidulogo.jpg
Baidu1.jpg
"Baidu" Site
Type E-Commerce
Cloud Based Storage
Artificial Intelligence
Launch Date January 1, 2000
Status Active
Product Line Search Engine
Encyclopedia
Discussion forum
Platform Cloud Service
Website www.baidu.com

Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) is the world's largest Chinese search engine, China's popular Internet integrated service company with information and knowledge as the core artificial intelligence platform company. Baidu has thousands of research engineers, which is the top technical team in China.[1] This team has mastered the advanced search engine technology, as known as the Hyperlink technology, making Baidu a Chinese high-tech enterprise mastering the world's cutting-edge science and core technology, and making China one of the only four countries in the world with search engine core technology outside the United States, Russia, and South Korea. However, technological advancement does not equal ethical advance. Baidu has faced criticism for their data mining and targeted advertising practices, which were catalysts for an increased amount of debate surrounding the ethical implications of online advertisement and privacy online.[2]

History

Robin Li at NASDAQ

In 1994, Robin Li (Yanhong Li, 李彦宏) joined IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones and Company, where he helped develop software for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.[3] He also worked on developing better algorithms for search engines and remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997.

At the end of 1999, Li saw the great potential of China's Internet and Chinese search engine services. He resolutely resigned from Silicon Valley's high-paying job and brought patent technology of search engine, and founded Baidu Inc in Zhongguancun on January 1, 2000. After that, Baidu launches independent search portal baidu.com and their own search engine within one year. In 2003, Baidu surpasses Google and becomes the preferred search engine for Chinese netizens. According to data from Analysis International, Baidu has a respectable market share of 58%, well above Google (Google's market share is around one-third). [4]

Li's original intention was to create a product to "provide the best and most equitable way for people to find what they are looking for".[5] This feat was accomplished as a result of the link analysis technology, which sorted search results based on how many connections they have with other pages. This algorithm was based on the assumption that the more times a page is linked from another site, the more credible it is. This assumption proved to be accurate, and since then, the company has rapidly expanded by producing new suites of products and acquiring new companies in many different markets. These products include Baidu Baike (an online encyclopedia), Wikipedia: Baidu Wangpan: Baidu Wangpan (a cloud storage service), and Baidu Tieba (a keyword-based discussion forum), among others.

Baidu's initial public offering occurred on August 5, 2005. At its IPO price of $27 a share, the company raised $109 million. With a rise of 354%, Baidu’s first-day gain ranks 18th in history and ranks as the best performance ever by an overseas deal.[6] In December 2007, Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index. As of May 2018, Baidu's market cap rose to US$99 billion.[7]

Name, Mission, and Vision

The word "Baidu" comes from Xin Qiji, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, who wrote eight hundred years ago. [8] The sentence wrote: "Having searched hundreds of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back, he is there in the dimmest candlelight." "Baidu"'s meaning is "searching for hundreds of times", which matches the enterprise's position as a search engine company, as well as expresses the resolution of Baidu to make their search engine top in the world. Baidu's mission is to "make the complicated world simpler through technology" and its vision is "to be a top global technology company which best understands users' needs and enables their growth".Baidu has faced criticism from the public for actions viewed as inconsistent with their claims. In May 2016, Baidu's P4P search results reportedly caused the death of a student who tried an experimental cancer therapy he found online. This event which is called "Death of Wei Zexi" has received widespread media coverage. Chinese media scholar Fang Kecheng then proclaimed that "Search engine Baidu is dead".[9]

Baidu Brain

Baidu Brain is Baidu's AI core technology engine, including vision, speech, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, deep learning, and other AI core technologies and AI open platforms. Baidu Brain supports all Baidu's businesses internally and is open to the outside world to help partners and developers accelerate the application of AI technology, and empower industry customers through DuerOS, Apollo, and Baidu Smart Cloud.[10] [11]

Overview of Baidu Open AI Strategy [12]

DuerOS

DuerOS is a cross-platform voice assistant service with an installed base of over 400 million and monthly voice queries reaching 3.2 billion in June 2019. With a network of over 300 partners, DuerOS is installed on smart devices, smartphones, children's watches, and story machines. Baidu released four DuerOS-powered Xiaodu Branded smart devices in 2018, including Xiaodu smart speaker and Xiaodu smart display, the first smart speaker in China with a display. Equipped with over 1,000 skills in genres such as education, cooking, gaming, and entertainment, the DuerOS skills store has been released for test trials. [13]

Apollo

Apollo is Baidu's open-source autonomous driving platform. It supports the commercial production of autonomous driving vehicles and incorporates autonomous driving capabilities. It helps to provide AI solutions in areas such as traffic flow, air pollution, and road hazards. [13]

Baidu Cloud

Baidu Cloud provides AI solutions, cloud infrastructure, and other services to enterprises and individuals. Its primary goal is to offer a comprehensive set of products, services, and tools to enable enterprises to improve productivity and operational efficiency through the use of Baidu AI and cloud infrastructure. Baidu Cloud offers general and industry-specific AI solutions, serving industries, including financial services, media, gaming, and telecommunications, while supporting internal usage. [13]

Baidu Products

Search Survices

  • Baidu Knows provides users with a query-based searchable community to share knowledge and experience. Through Baidu Knows, registered members of Baidu Knows can post specific questions for other members to respond to and also answer questions of other members. [14]
  • Baidu Baike, is China's largest online encyclopedia by users; second largest encyclopedia by article count. [15]
  • Baidu Image Search[16] enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms. [17]
  • Baidu Search Ranking[18] provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.

Geo

  • Baidu Maps is a desktop and mobile mapping solution similar to Google Maps, but covering only the Greater China region. It is a platform to provide users with traveling-related services including intelligent route planning, intelligent navigation, real-time traffic and so on. As a "new generation of Artificial Intelligence Map", Baidu Maps has realized voice interaction which facilitates the whole process of user control, and has launched AR walking guide, AR tour guide and other practical functions.

International

  • Baidu started its Japanese language search service, run by Baidu Japan, the company's first regular service outside of China.[19] It includes a search bar for web pages and image searches, user help, and advanced services.[20] The Japanese search engine closed on March 16, 2015.[21]
  • Simeji is one of the most downloaded input method products in the Japanese Android electronic market. It is loaded with functions such as a mushroom plug-in system and a decorative skin keyboard. On December 13, 2011, Baidu announced the acquisition of the well-known Japanese mobile phone Japanese input method "simeji".
  • Baidu Translate, an online translation service originated in February 2013.[22] As of April 2020, it supports 200 languages, the most out of any online translation service, to help fight against COVID-19.[23]

Media

  • Baidu Tieba provides users with a query-based searchable community to exchange views and share knowledge and experiences. It is an online community bound tightly with Baidu's search service. [24]
  • Baidu News provides links to a selection of local, national and international news, and presents news stories in a searchable format, within minutes of their publication on the Web. Baidu News uses an automated process to display links to related headlines, which enables people to see many different viewpoints on the same story. The Chinese government and Chinese industry sources stated that Baidu received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a full-fledged news website. Thus Baidu is able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. Baidu is the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license.[25]

Online Video Platform

  • iQIYI is a leading internet video streaming service owned by Baidu. The video service platform provides its users a comprehensive library of professionally produced content, as well as user-generated content. [26]
  • Haokan is a short video app, offering a wide variety of user-generated and professionally produced content often in coordination with multiple platform networks. Haokan allows video content creators to distribute their content freely to build a fan base and receive revenue share for their content contribution. [13]

Ethical Issues

Search Engine

Disclaimer

In view of the fact that Baidu automatically generates links to third-party Web pages according to the keywords you type by non-manual search, except for the service terms stated by Baidu, Baidu will not be responsible for all accidents, negligence, infringement and losses caused by using Baidu (including computer virus infection caused by downloading the content of the third-party website to which the search link is linked), except for the service terms stated by Baidu, We will not bear any legal liability.

Any third-party Web page linked by Baidu search is made or provided by others. You may obtain information and enjoy services from the third-party Web page. Baidu will not be responsible for its legality or bear any legal liability.

Baidu respects and protects all personal privacy rights of users using Baidu. The user name, email address and other personal data registered by Baidu will not be disclosed to third parties without your personal permission or according to the mandatory provisions of relevant laws and regulations. Baidu reminds you: the keyword you enter when using a search engine will not be considered your personal privacy data.[27]

Death of Wei Zexi

Baidu responded to the "weizexi incident" starting from a Q&A community. Weizexi, a computer student at Xi'an University of electronic technology, learned that he had a synovial sarcoma after a physical examination two years ago. According to weizexi's pre-life description, the disease is "a very terrible soft tissue tumor, and there is no effective treatment except for the latest research and development and the technology in clinical experiments." After learning about "the second hospital of the armed police Beijing corps" through Baidu search and CCTV, Wei Zexi's parents went to the hospital for investigation and was told by the doctor surnamed Li that it could be treated. So Wei Zexi began to work in the armed police Beijing Corps The second hospital has four times of treatment.[28] but the treatments proved unsuccessful, and Wei died on April 12, 2016. Before his death, Wei accused Baidu of promoting false medical information, and he denounced the hospital for claiming high success rates for the treatment.[29]

From the perspective of economics, Baidu has changed from an Internet "emerging" enterprise to an "oligarch", and the direct reason for the formation of this "oligarch" is the ban on Google.[30] This kind of phenomenon can be defined as eliminating competition by making decrees that violate the objective laws of the economy leads to market imbalance. The current search engine market is basically an oligopoly market, and Baidu is the largest one. In the lack of supervision, it is not surprising that a search engine company can expand its business to the medical consulting industry and produce adverse consequences.

In fact, this is not a new type of medical technology. Wei Zexi has hopes for this kind of medical technology, but this technology has been discarded outside China. In Europe, clinical trials have proved the failure of this technology.[31] However, domestic hospitals have failed to use this technology. What is particularly shocking is that this is a hospital with the name of "Police" - but it was reused until a death occurred (in fact, Wei Zexi was not the only one who proved that the treatment was ineffective), and it was just a gimmick. In fact, this is indeed a "new type of biological therapy", which is called "biological missile": by releasing targeted information for precise guidance, it can hit those patients who are suffering from incurable diseases and whose old treatment is no longer available.

Baidu is a listed commercial company, it made products that could attract more people to use it so that they can benefit from these customers. Advertisement methods like Dynamic Product Ads, Brand Marketing, and Search Promotion show the whole procedure of how and where Baidu gets financial aid. The hospitals pay Baidu for the advertisement. This is Brand Marketing. When people are searching for illness-related information, Baidu will recommend these hospitals to the patients, which is the so-called "show the correct commodity information to the right people at the right time and scene" in Dynamic Product Ads. Furthermore, because of the disclaimer, which states that Baidu is not responsible for any search results. Legally speaking, Baidu was right.

Online Community

Commercialization of Tieba

Baidu sold the hemophilia online community, one of the communities of Tieba (an online community product like BBS), to unqualified hospitals. This community was founded by a user with the nickname "Mayicai". "Mayicai" said about 5,000 netizens use this online community to discuss and share effective treatments for hemophilia on Tieba.[32] The new owner of this community with nickname “hemophilia expert” posted that he had formed a consulting team with "a number of experts related to hemophilia to accurately answer the questions of patients". He explained his previous behavior of deleting posts of other people, and claimed that he was entrusted by Baidu company to manage the community. Most of the medical staff in the consultant team of "hemophilia expert" come from a medical institution in Xi'an. One of them is “Professor” Shanxi Liu, the president of hemophilia Research Institute of Shaanxi Medical University, who was reported by hemophilia bar netizens for many times in April 2014. “Professor” Liu was latter proved to be a liar.

Tieba is Baidu's product, the real economy market does not have the law to stipulate that Baidu cannot sell its own products. However, the volume of the Tieba is large with hundreds of millions of users. When such a large product appears, it will produce uneconomic behavior. It is called internal diseconomy in economics. Internal uneconomic refers to the asymmetry of information caused by the strength of one party during the transaction. The cost outside the contract caused is borne by the party without information, which is not in line with the principle of equality of market economy. During the commercialization of Tieba, Baidu is the seller, because it controls the management right of the Tieba, and the users of the Tieba do not have this right. This difference forms information asymmetry, such as the actual controller of the post bar (Baidu knows that who is the controller, while the users do not). This information asymmetry makes the users of this community to bear additional costs, such as medical risks.

See Also

External Links

References

  1. http://home.baidu.com/
  2. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,920,859.PN.&OS=PN/5,920,859&RS=PN/5,920,859
  3. Robin Li's vision powers Baidu's Internet search dominance Archived February 3, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Taipei Times, September 17, 2006.
  4. How Google took on China—and lost. MIT technology review, 19 December, 2018.
  5. https://baike.baidu.com/reference/427116/74a23gpaBp1id7YOJTojsNSLYPiEFfKSdcxZ0sklG0MySaqCIrIVDI7sfDGNypGBR5cWQCy5R8-1HuQnhQDoSt7thhMetJlF
  6. The Untold Story of the Baidu IPO Seeking Alpha. Archived from the original on October 24, 2016. Retrieved September 8, 2019.
  7. Search site moves at the speed of China. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 22, 2012. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
  8. https://ir.baidu.com/company-overview/
  9. https://qz.com/1530831/an-obituary-for-baidu-argues-chinas-vast-internet-has-no-search-engine/
  10. Baidu Baike "Baidu Brain" Retrieved March 19, 2021
  11. Baidu Research. Jan 13, 2021. "2020 Retrospective: Baidu's AI Innovations" Retrieved March 19, 2021
  12. Baidu Inc. Feb 6, 2018. "Baidu Open AI Strategy" Retrieved March 19, 2021
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Baidu. "Baidu Core: Search and feed" Retrieved March 19, 2021
  14. Wikipedia "Baidu Knows"
  15. Wikipedia "Baidu"
  16. https://image.baidu.com/
  17. Wikipedia "Baidu"
  18. https://www.asiapacdigital.com/china-digital-services?gclid=Cj0KCQiA1pyCBhCtARIsAHaY_5fUe8zSkdYMQ9y9yLMAFQrcPUg289Hl0GZdF10ZUpaXLxBn_YNASw8aAop1EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
  19. https://web.archive.org/web/20160823061048/
  20. http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/china-google-in-japan.html
  21. www.techinasia.com/baidu-shuts-japan-search-engine
  22. https://www.apkhere.com/app/com.baidu.baidutranslate
  23. https://twitter.com/baiduresearch/status/1248316242689019904
  24. Wikipedia "Baidu"
  25. Google's Lookalike is Expanding in China
  26. iQIYI. "Company Overview" Retrieved March 19, 2021
  27. https://www.baidu.com/duty/wise/wise_index.html
  28. CEO of China's Baidu summoned over student death. Yahoo Finance, May 3, 2016.
  29. China to investigate Baidu over student's death, shares diveMay 3, 2016
  30. China condemns decision by Google to lift censorship. BBC News, 23 March 2010.
  31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare
  32. Baidu to halt commercialization of Tieba health forums. ChinaDaily. 1 Jan, 2016.

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