The Baidu Story
http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile
I like words and their origins, so found this site from the Baidu search engine interesting. The phrase “baidu”, “a hundred times”, refers to a classic poem where the writer searches everywhere--”a hundred times”—for an idealized beauty, so the phrase is now an idiom for thorough searching. I appreciate that desire for a name that alludes to a classical idea, as I do not feel much enthusiasm for names like “yahoo” and “youtube”. The poem appears across a banner at the top of the page, which is also a nice nod to tradition. Of course, I suppose they are trying to distinguish themselves from that upstart, Google, and to borrow heft from China’s long traditions.
The second character, the "du", is here placed over a blue paw print, in the title, which I suppose is a reference to the Panda image of China. Or a phoneme for Panda in Mandarin?
The site also let’s us know that you can use “phonetic” or pin-yin searches now, to avoid shifting from one language to another and for those who are not sure of the character for their query. That must take a lot of doing on the technical end.
They also place ads by tracking user preferences, a model they seem to be taking credit for. I think Google might dispute that. It's interesting to peruse comments on articles about how hard it is to like Baidu; some readers say that Baidu users are "low-educated" (Alvin Chao, 12 10 2010, on How Baidu Won China, Busineswswekk http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm) and not given to much introspection about their government or information policy in China.
There are links from this page to other information on the company, but I had just searched the name and found this page interesting.
edited by mmukai on 3/6/2011
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