
The new Google? Baidu's big plans to bust out of China - nkurz
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329794.200-the-new-google-baidus-big-plans-to-bust-out-of-china.html#.U9VX0IBdVtl
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valarauca1
I hate to call Baidu a 'chinese knock off', but in the purest sense of the
word it is. They simply take Western internet phenomenons; Street Maps, Open
collaborative encyclopedia, crawler based search engine, even a TV/youtube
service which I've used to watch star trek (TNG torrents post season 6-7 get
very slow and netflix didn't exist at the time). And copy their feature sets,
even stealing whole american templates. Last time I used Baidu's video service
they literally stole their layout and color scheme from pornhub down to ad
placement and video selection.

Lastly Betteridge's Law of Headlines.[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

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verroq
>I'm not a racist, but I think all the Chinese do is copy other people's work.

~~~
bpodgursky
> I'm not a racist, but when a country has almost no IP protections and
> artificially limits access to international competitors via a firewall, it
> sets up an environment where copying other peoples' work is a very low-risk
> and profitable proposition.

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RyanONeill1970
If their web spider is any indication of how fit they are, they really need to
shape up.

The Baidu spider is the IE6 of web bots, it hammers sites, fumbles around
breaking everything with its crap JavaScript compiler and causing so many
errors that it's easier to just block it. The same with Yandex.

I really hope they fix it, but a search for the Baidu user agent will show a
lot of results just wanting to block it. They need to fix that.

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magicalist
> _Baidu is the biggest search engine in China, beating Google as well as
> local competitors like Sogou and 360_

That's not terribly surprising given that Google has been blocked in China
since June 1.

[https://en.greatfire.org/google.com](https://en.greatfire.org/google.com)

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jpatokal
More relevantly, Google pulled out of China in 2010 after refusing to comply
with censorship requirements. They had a 31% share at the time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They were not blocked until June, however. And now they are almost completely
shut out.

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jmsdnns
Would be fascinating to see them compete in markets without state influence.

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higherpurpose
People don't trust Google as it is, why would they trust China's "Google"?

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gress
The fact that Google has destroyed user trust is what gives Baidu an opening.

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maximumoverload
"I am not trusting Google with my data, because it's in bed with US government
too much.

Instead, I will trust BaiDu, that's even more in bed with far more oppresive
goverment."

I don't know about that.

~~~
levosmetalo
"U.S government can easily send drones to my country to shoot me, or at least
force my country to get me extradicted, or their secret service could just
take me to Guantanamo without anyone noticing" vs "Yes, Chinese government is
much more oppressive than U.S, but they are not likely to share data with my
government, or to get me in any way unless I decide to go to China".

Heck, even if I were US citizen, I would trust Baidu more. Especially if I
were US citizen. If you have to share your data, it's better to share it with
someone that can't get you easily, or won't share it further with someone that
can.

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hueving
Do you have examples of where people have been extradited from other countries
due to NSA collected data? I'm also curious about the drone part. I know they
have been used in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq to kill. Have there been
cases where they've picked off people in London, etc?

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krapp
The American government kidnapping people to torture at Gitmo or bombing
people's homes into rubble over Google searches isn't something that actually
happens. So, it's not something choosing another search engine can reliably
protect against.

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vph
> Rumours have been circulating that the Chinese search engine is developing a
> bike that could drive itself through packed city streets.

I will believe it when I see it.

~~~
ihnorton
It is kind of fun to imagine fleets of riderless bikes shuttling themselves
around cities to meet demand. HubWay, CitiBike, and similar services would
love that; I don't have any citation, but I would guess that manual shuttling
and redistribution of bikes is a significant portion of their operating cost.

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drakaal
Baidu will have to go from copy cat to innovator to make this work.

Right now Baidu is missing a differentiatior that shows how it is better.
Unlike T-Shirts that you can find a market for knock-offs search engines are
free to the end user so you have to compete on quality, or on "default
install". Baidu is missing both of those.

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schuke
Although many would dismiss Baidu as a Chinese Google copycat, the fact is
Baidu's founder developed his own page ranking method independently
around/before the time PageRank came into existence.

Here's what Wikipedia says in its PageRank entry (Robin Li is Baidu's founder
and CEO)

>A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed
by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-
scoring and page ranking.[16] The technology in RankDex would be patented by
1999[17] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[18][19] Li's work
would be referenced by some of Larry Page's U.S. patents for his Google search
methods.[20]

I do not like Baidu and use Bing whenever possible (Google is too unstable in
China). But again, the fact is one can dismiss Baidu for its many products but
perhaps not its search.

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rebel
"This article appeared in print under the headline 'China's Google' is on a
roll'" ... Which was a much more appropriate headline for this article. Did
they start changing their online headlines solely for the purpose of click
bait?

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noname123
Russia has Yandex, China has Baidu; hopefully Brazil and India will one day
come with their own country's native search engine to counter-balance the
West's juggernaut.

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illicium
Both Yandex and Baidu are just copying Google's every move though. It's
competition, but there is little innovation going on.

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seanmcdirmid
Isn't that pretty much the whole Chinese internet industry? At any rate, there
isn't much reason to use Baidu outside of china.

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jpatokal
It's easy to be dismissive, but the West has nothing like Alibaba: think Ebay
for businesses selling to businesses. Which is why its IPO seems likely to top
$20 billion.

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seanmcdirmid
Amazon at the consumer level is a more appropriate comparison.

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bd_at_rivenhill
Why? I don't see sellers on Alibaba advertising the number of units that they
can produce per month. Aliexpress is much more like ebay if you always
filtered search with "buy it now" (except that the prices are generally lower
and you have to deal with longer lead times). Amazon kills it with breadth of
selection and fast delivery times; I haven't seen anything out of China that
compares, but the Amazon prices are higher for comparable items.

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seanmcdirmid
Amazon acts as a storefront for many independent merchants, just like Taobao
does. This mirrors the way my wife uses amazon and Taobao, but we find Amazon
to be more reliable in quality. And then there is jd.com....

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varkson
Having used the Baidu Android software, it's really really nice. I'd love to
see a version in English.

