SubscribeBaidu Strengthened Its Leadership
Today’s hot news is the release of two research reports on China’s search market, one is the report by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), another is the report by China IntelliConsulting Corporation, whose founder Peter Bowang Lv was a research fellow of CNNIC.
Both reports, using simiar telephone survey method in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, have the same conclusion that Baidu gained its market share in last year, strengthened its leadership in China’s search market, while Google China continued to lose its share significantly.
According to CNNIC report, 62.1% users choose Baidu as their preferred search engine, representing an increase of 10 percentage in one year, while Google China’s market share decreased 8 percentage to 25.3%. In Mr. Lv’s research, Baidu gained 13% market share in last year, almost two third users use Baidu as their first choice, during the same period, Google China lost about 12% shares.
We all know that last year was the first year for Google to make its China presence, why Google China kept losing its market after its officially entering China? That’s the hot topic in today’s blogosphere. I agree with Keso that Google China did not think locally. For example, Google was blocked more frequently by Great Fire Wall in last year, but Google China failed to redirect those traffic to Google.cn. Google China has not know how to compete in Chinese market, its awful Chinese name 谷歌 is a proof for it. According to CNNIC’s survey, only 16.3% users are aware of Google’s Chinese name.
Google China has made official comment to the reports, said it’s a long way to go. Untill now, China’s internet market is dominated by local companies. If Google don’t start to think local, I guess China’s search market will still be playground of domestic players.
Update: Red Herring has a detailed report on it too.
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6 Responses to “Baidu Strengthened Its Leadership”
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I met a group of newly employed Google China people at a function last year. What amazed me was that so many of them seemed to be former McKinsey consultants or similar. What would those sort of people know about running a real business? Especially in an industry so fast moving like the Internet in China. I can imagine that while Baidu is getting down & dirty and doing whatever it takes to win, the former McKinsey consultants are strategizing and preparing lovely looking powerpoints to present to HQ in the U.S.
Having said that, and in Google’s defence, I think that many Chinese also search overseas sites so I bet that Google gets a lot of English-language search traffic out of China. Plus I am sure that they make a lot of revenue from Chinese companies who advertise on Google.com. I have heard that Alibaba alone spends around $US5m a year promoting its B2B site on Google and is their biggest customer in Asia.
[...] More comment on this is available from China Herald and China Web2.0 [...]
What would McKinsey folks know about running a company? What would Lou Gerstner know about running a technology company like IBM when he sold cookies at RJR Nabisco after his McKinsey life? What would an English teacher know about the Internet business in China? What sort of people are you looking for? If they’re making powerpoint slides to HQ is it the ex-McKinsey people’s fault or something wrong with the US HQ’s China strategy? The first question we should ask may be ‘why did they hire a highly trained technical engineer to run a consumer business?’
Can Google China compete with Baidu?…
Interesting NY Times profile of Baidu, China’s main search engine and currently the 4th biggest website in the world. It has a market value of $3 billion, but “some analysts” question whether Baidu can keep out competition from Google and……
[...] China Web 2.0 Review points out that Google should go more local. Local in this case wouldn’t only be related to search results but also to the way Google is managed. Demo China adds: “By dictating business decisions about China from Mountain View, CA in the U.S., the [Chinese] opinions feel that Google isn’t making an effort to understand the Chinese search market.” [...]
[...] The report showed that 74.5% users take Baidu as their primary search engine, increased from 62% from one year ago, while Google China’s market share slipped significantly from 25.3% to 14.3%. The recent report by China IntelliConsulting Corporation (CIC) also made similar conclusion that Baidu’s market share keeps increasing. But according to CIC’s result, Google’s market share in China only decreased 1.1 percentage. [...]