Will Baidu take on Google at its own game outside China as well as in it?
Google is undoubtedly the big gun in global search. Or is it? In the Western world it is such a dominant force that in some places the company’s name has become a synonym for searching the internet. But it’s not the biggest player everywhere. In China, a company called Baidu controls 70% of the market – considerably more than that held by Google’s Chinese arm.
Advertising is another area where major differences can be found between the companies. While both rely on advertising, only Baidu offers a “pay for placement” option. This means that companies can pay to have links to their websites listed higher than those of competitors when customers search for particular key words. Google does not do this, insisting that advertising results produced by searches are always clearly identified as sponsored links and are displayed in a separate list to the right of the main results, which are independent.
[This article has been reproduced with permission from IMD, a leading business school based in Switzerland. http://www.imd.org]