Google China vs Baidu
If you have the slightest interest in Chinese Internet companies, you know that Google is not the number one search engine in China, instead, that distinction belongs to Baidu. This is important, of course, because of the ad revenue that can be made from Online Advertising in China. It appears that Google has recently fallen even further behind in the China Internet wars, as the following article translated from Modern Weekly, describes:
Google’s Naming Mistakes in China
Google has been beset with problems ever since it came out with its Chinese name, Guge. The recently published “2006 Chinese Search Engine Report” has only added fuel to the anti “Guge” fire. Behind Google’s “Guge” problem lies the difficult practical question of how multinational companies can adjust in various countries like China.
On September 13th, CNNIC released the “2006 Chinese Search Engine Report”. The focus of the report is the battle between Google and Baidu. The writer of the report obviously understands where the interests of web readers lie in terms of this report, as the heart of the report focuses on the comparison between Google and Baidu. It also looks deeper into Google’s Chinese name “Guge“.
This timely report will make some happy and others quite upset, but the conclusion in regards to its focal point, Google, is rather startling.
Point 1: Baidu was selected by 62.1% of the market as the “user’s first search engine choice”. This is up 14.2% from last year. Guge’s (Google’s) share of this market is only 25.3%, down 8% from last year.
Point 2: Google has always been the search engine of choice for upper class Chinese Internet users. However, this year the percentage of such users using Google fell 10%, while the proportion of upper class Chinese Internet users using Baidu rose 10%. Google currently holds 46.5% of this market, with Baidu holding 39.4% of this market. Yet the report put out by CNNIC in August of last year about Chinese search engines showed that just last year Google had twice as many upper class Chinese Internet users as Baidu.
Point 3: Do you know the Chinese name of Google? 76.2% of users did not know, with only 16.3% saying “Guge” [the correct answer]. Even 63.8% of Chinese Internet users who chose Google as their preferred search engine didn’t know Google’s Chinese name.
Lu Baiwang gave the following reason for the fall of Google and rise of Baidu in China: In addition to the excellent showing by Baidu, another important reason is that Google China reports to Google headquarters when making decisions. Google China does not have independent decision making authority, and Google’s Gmail servers are often inaccessible by mainland Chinese users. Because of this, Baidu has been able to carve out a space to grow with no real competition.
But according to Google, things are not this simple. Is the slide of Google due to a stupid name?
Google has been suffering ever since it came up with its Chinese name Guge on April 12th. In August at a press conference, Google China Area CEO Li Kaifu once again got attacked for using the name “Guge”. And the just published “2006 Chinese Search Engine Report” only added fuel to the “anti-Guge” fire.
It is very rare that a a company’s name brings so many headaches.
The Chinese internet market is a nightmare to foreign Internet companies. Yahoo chose the name “Yahu“, but its localization strategies have been rather lacking, while eBay chose a half-Chinese, half-Western name “eBay Yiqu“. Unfortunately eBay has been surpassed by Chinese online Internet auctioneer Taobao, and to this day is still far behind.
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Is Google or Baidu Better?
How about users in China? Do you think Google or Baidu is better? Will Baidu capture the lion’s share of upper class Chinese Internet search engine users?
