Baidu's actions of manipulating search results for profit are definite. Even a small move by Li Yanhong (Robin Li) causes significant impact, and if they don't manipulate the rankings, it's already considered a good thing. However, Baidu's algorithm in its early stage was indeed poor, a kind of trashy algorithm that only managed to deceive the post-80s generation and those who half-understand technology. Their technical foundation was basically just muddling through to make a living. It falls far short of Yahoo's (I now suspect whether Jack Ma and Robin Li colluded to bring down Yahoo! China; I really miss the old days of manually curated directory-style search engines, where submitting a site would give you a fair ranking). With Google, as long as the ranking was done well, that was enough. Later, due to increasing commercial pressures, they started engaging in some minor manipulations and manual interventions to influence the results.