Baidu, incorporated in the year 2000 is a multinational internet-based technology company that specializes mainly in search-related services and other products and services. Baidu was started by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Baidu is the biggest search engine services provider in the Country and is trying its maximum to spread its operations across the world. With the growing footprints of Baidu, it became the first Chinese company to take its place in the NASDAQ-100 index. It employs more than 40,000 people all over the world and is headquartered in Beijing, China. The official website of Baidu is baidu.com
About Baidu’s services
Baidu offers its services across a range of sectors and has a plethora of products and services that directly impact the life of an ordinary person. In this Blog we will talk about various products and services briefly, then we will see the details of various branch locations of Baidu and then ultimately the most important of all factors, why Baidu is gaining momentum and is getting popular. So let’s begin with discussing some of the services offered by Baidu:
Baidu Search Engine
A search engine is a software system that is designed in such a way that it searches the world wide web with the searched keywords in a systematic way and lists down various web results with the links that can take you to the respective web pages from those links. Baidu relies on the RankDex site-scoring algorithm, which predates the page rank algorithm of Google which was developed 2 years later. It is also referred to as ‘link analysis’ as it involves ranking the popularity of a particular website by determining how many web pages are linked to it.
Baidu Maps
Baidu Maps is a web mapping services provider that is available primarily in the Chinese language.
The official website of Baidu maps is map.baidu.com. The mapping services are provided by Baidu both on smartphones and desktops. The features and options available in Baidu include Satellite imagery, street maps, street view and indoor view too. There is also an option of route planner that helps you in deciding your route and gives that flexibility in selecting the path. It is available both on Android and iOS applications. Coming to the year of inception, Baidu maps started its services back in 2005. In 2010, Baidu added the feature of 3D viewing in maps for select cities and 2012 360 degrees view of a few selected buildings was added as a breakthrough feature by the company.
Baidu Baike
Baidu Baike is an online encyclopedia providing users with information on the lines of Wikipedia. It was launched in the year of 2006 after the decision of the Chinese Government to censor the operations of Wikipedia in China. Overall the search results of categorization of information on Baidu Baike is divided into 12 zones namely nature, culture, geography, history, life, society, art, personalities, economy, science, sport and current events. Baidu Baike supports only the Chinese language and has been under criticism lately due to the issues of censorship and copyright violations, but with all that Baidu Baike has made its space in the Chinese market and is one of the top search results when used along with the in-house search engine of Baidu.
Baidu Wangpan
Baidu Wangpan is a cloud services provider and specialises in cloud storage services and integration across various internet-enabled devices. The official website of Baidu Wangpan is pan.baidu.com. It provides its users with 15 GB of free space and can be expanded with fees and is in line with its competitors like Dropbox and Google Drive. It is available across a range of operating systems like Windows, macOS, iOS, iPad, and Windows Phone. The main features of Baidu Wangpan are File management, Resource sharing and Third-party integration. In 2013, Baidu Cloud announced its offer of 2 terabytes of free permanent storage for users as the much renowned Cloud Storage war was undergoing in the Chinese technology world and its recent partnership with Qualcomm in 2012 has given it the much-needed edge to expand its footprint.
Baidu Tieba
Baidu Tieba is a bulletin board service website and is one of the most used communication platforms in China. The official website of Tieba is tieba.baidu.com. It was released in the year of 2003. Tieba is an online community that is heavily integrated with the Baidu search engine. It acts like an online meeting community where the user can search for a keyword known as ‘bar’ and if it exists previously you will direct to that ‘bar’ or a new one will be created. Initially, anonymous posting was also allowed but after 2010, Baidu required the users to create and register an account before using the services of Tieba to use the online interactive community.
Apart from the above services of Baidu there exists many other services too which Baidu provides and the range of services it offers is constantly expanding and is on the rise. A few other services which Baidu offers are – Baidu News – which provides links to local, national and international news and presents news in such a manner that is very easily searchable. Then comes Baidu Knows, Baidu MP3, Baidu Image search, Baidu Video search, Baidu Translate, Baidu Games and many other services. We just tried to discuss some of the best and top features of Baidu. Now let’s discuss the branch locations of Baidu and the locations from where it operates.
About Branch Locations
Baidu is headquartered in Beijing China and has seven branch locations in 2 countries. The headquarters of Baidu is in Baidu Campus, 10 Shangdi 10th St, Haidian Qu. The other 5 locations are also in China and the only branch location outside China is in the United States and is located at 1195 Bordeaux Dr, California. Robin Li is the Co-Founder and present Chief Executive Officer.
Why it’s Popular?
Wide Range of Services
Baidu offers a very wide range of services as we have discussed above like Search engines, maps, images, videos and whatnot. This makes Baidu very popular in China as it becomes a one-stop solution for most of the queries and services related to technology and its presence across the spectrum gives it the market presence too and also the much-needed brand name that any technology company aspires for.
Revenue
Because of its presence across the sectors, Baidu with its Advertisement services which allow users and companies to bid for space for advertisement gave it the revenue to expand. And since then Baidu has never looked back and has been one of the most profitable technology companies in China. With this money in the kitty, it allows Baidu to invest heavily in Research & Development that gives it the push in the long run.
Large Chinese Population
With a large presence in China and some criticism of being a state-supported technology company and aspects of censorship, this gives Baidu an almost free run in China and with the large Chinese population it automatically gains a large user base and with its top quality products and services it automatically gains their traction and has just moved ahead with its operation.
With more than 7 million websites using Baidu and a share of more than 70% in China technology market in search engines, these two aspects give Baidu an edge over any of the nearest competitors by a very large margin. We will keep tracking the new changes that Baidu brings in the technology space and will keep updating regularly.