Baidu in the Eyes of Koreans

According to Korea's Chosun Daily, the rapid development of Baidu, a local internet search engine in China, has been astonishing. The realization of the ambitions of Robin Li, the top executive (CEO) of Baidu, has drawn attention.

Baidu, founded by CEO Robin Li in 2000, currently has an average monthly search volume of 3.3 billion, growing into the world's third-largest search site. Recently, Baidu has also entered the Japanese internet search market.

According to Baidu's third-quarter performance report published on October 26th, the net profit was $24.2 million, which tripled compared to the previous year. According to Analysys International, Baidu's market share in the Chinese internet search market in the third quarter was 60.5%, far exceeding Google's 23.7%, while Yahoo! only accounted for 10.4%.

At the same time, praise for Baidu's CEO Robin Li has been pouring in like a flood. Business Week selected him along with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt as the best leaders of 2006. On October 25th, the Hurun Research Institute named Robin Li as the richest person on the "China IT Rich List." His wealth has reached 18 billion yuan.

Robin Li studied library science at Peking University but later believed that "search" would become an important service industry. Therefore, he switched to studying computers in 1991. After graduating from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he worked at Dow Jones and Infoseek, gaining experience as a technical professional. In 1999, he suddenly returned to China, giving up his life in the U.S., even refusing an offer of over $500,000 worth of shares in Infoseek. Actually, his reason was simple. He saw the potential of China's internet market. With the confidence of Don Quixote, he began raising startup funds. During one meeting with investors, he loudly turned off his mobile phone and said, "I cannot guarantee a bright future, but it is better than giving up because you think there is no future." Thus, he raised $1.2 million.

Afterward, with the popularity of community searches, Baidu's customer base surged rapidly. Now Baidu has become the world's third-largest search site with an average monthly search volume of 3.3 billion.