This caught my eye when I was writing that Google post the other day, and I couldn't resist:
Baidu 少儿, or Baidu Kids, is beautifully done and reflects Baidu's understanding of the Chinese market. When I was doing fieldwork in Beijing last summer, one of the teachers we interviewed said that some Grade 1 homework assignments involved running internet searches and bringing some results to class. And there is nothing better than a safe search engine for that end. (The only problem would be convincing kids to goto the Kids site.)
The first row of links (the golden paw buttons above) are: Study English, Play Games, Science Knowledge, Child Songs, Cartoons, Parents' Links. The first link on the top left being "Study English" again reflects an understanding, this time of the parents' wishes.
I may be reading too much into this though, since it's only a beta section, and their "understanding" might have come out of luck rather than strategic planning.
P.S. Baidu's also been up to other things, mainly in the converging mobile and web realms. See China Web 2.0 Review's post about their new call-in search service (powered by real human operators).
I saw this the other day, and as a father of a six-year-old girl was very interested. But I did a quick test to see how safe it really is for children and it didn't perform very well. For instance, searching for 女 (woman) with the 图片 (images) function resulted in this page coming up first (not work safe or for children whose parents don't want them to see people having sex or upskirt shots). I checked out the normal Baidu search function and it resulted in exactly the same page.
It actually performs very well with some search terms, which result in sites especially designed for children. But if you can't do an image search for "woman" that results in pictures appropriate for children, then I wouldn't be encouraging my daughter to use it for her homework.
Posted by: Stephen Frost | August 10, 2007 at 03:56 PM
Hmmm. Well, it's still beta, so there IS hope, but as you point out, it's a bad sign so far :p
Posted by: Jason | August 10, 2007 at 06:51 PM
Baidu in China is like Google in the US. Keywords advertisement on Baidu in China has been proven to be as effective as keyword advertisement on Google in the US. If you had to choose one search engine to advertise in China, you should choose Baidu
AmeriChinaB2B Inc, which runs the most visited US-China business to business (B2B) web platforms, now offers services to enable US businesses to advertise on Baidu.com. These services will help US businesses export to China, the world's fastest growing market.
Any US business that thinks about exporting to China will want to consider keywords advertisement on Baidu, which is the leading search engine in China. As of today, Baidu has over 60% of the search market share in China.
For more information, please check: http://www.acb2b.com and http://www.acb2b.cn
Posted by: Moonzie | August 29, 2007 at 02:43 AM
Moonzie is pushing a product here, right? I noticed his other comments, all of which end up with the same URL. It's an interesting form of spam; highly time consuming but extremely well targetted. Here is Moonzie popping up again. Here are some Google results that show Moonzie is hitting China blogs pretty hard on this. The question is: Who is Moonzie? This seems to be worth a story in itself!
Posted by: Stephen Frost | August 29, 2007 at 08:30 AM
since we're on this topic, i like this page that compares the both key searchengines:
http://searchengineland.com/070615-081218.php
it's gonna be a difficult battle for google, and compared to ebay, alot of the difficulty is cultural and political too.
Posted by: markov | September 06, 2007 at 07:36 AM