Five Truths About Baidu - XJP's Ramblings

Yesterday, I saw the "Open Letter to Baidu CEO Robin Li" on Interactive Encyclopedia. The article was too sour, too long, and too bad. If Baidu has already become a target for everyone, then Interactive Encyclopedia is not much better either. Haven't you noticed that Wikipedia still maintains its dignity?

Should Baidu be criticized? Yes! Baidu becoming a target of public criticism is inseparable from its status as the top Chinese search engine, so much so that criticizing Baidu has become a way for media to attract user attention. Making money to the point where so many people feel nauseated by it is indeed rare. If there is such a thing as a universal enemy in China's Internet industry, Tencent and Baidu are both on the list.

Many people know about Baidu, but they may not fully understand it. Here, I will list five bad records about Baidu just for entertainment.

Truth One: Making money by placing ads in search results

Search bidding ranking is the largest business segment of Baidu's revenue that I have learned about over the years. Even though it has been renamed multiple times, it has not affected its core position at all. Without bidding ads, there would be no Baidu of today.

However, compared to keyword search ads like Google, Baidu's bidding ranking is completely integrated with search results. If you don't carefully distinguish, it is almost impossible to notice the existence of bidding ads. This practice has triggered two completely different voices. Supporters believe that such ads can increase actual transaction volume for customers, while opponents believe that this increases advertising costs and ineffective users for merchants. At its most extreme, almost an entire page of search results on Baidu was filled with bidding rankings. Behind the crazy pursuit of merchants lies the chase for various interests.

But the core issue is that the primary service goal of Baidu as a search engine should be its users. Advertising is only a secondary benefit of serving users. However, the unrestricted bidding ranking affects normal searches for users. Although the reform of bidding ranking has made loud slogans respecting users, the concessions made in the end were very small.

Truth Two: A large number of unethical case records

The most well-known stain of Baidu is undoubtedly the exposure of pharmaceutical search ads by CCTV. At the time, Baidu provided bidding ad services for some irregular pharmaceutical products, causing a large number of user interests to be damaged. After the incident, Baidu claimed that it would sincerely repent and correct its ways. So we saw Robin Li appear on that year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala. The pharmaceutical search ad incident revealed that as an advertiser, Baidu made the wrong choice when faced with money and morality. Medicines, phishing websites, scammers... all kinds of scams spread widely under the guise of Baidu ads, showcasing Baidu's sense of social responsibility as a giant in China's Internet industry.

A widely circulated claim about Baidu's bidding system is that many Baidu agents threaten clients: if you don't buy bidding ranking, your website's ranking will plummet, and even your inclusion might be reset to zero. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and more and more client exposures prove the existence of this practice. Of course, Baidu can push the blame onto some agents, claiming complete ignorance, and promise severe punishment for those rogue agents. Listen, this tone is very similar to the official stance of relevant departments, and in the end, temporary workers are used as scapegoats. I do not believe that Baidu is completely unaware of the practices of adjusting weights and adjusting inclusions. It is most likely that they pretend not to know, turn a blind eye, and then gleefully accept piles of cash.

The most typical case is that JD.com, Newegg, Amazon.cn, and many other commercial websites have all purchased bidding ads for their own website names. Isn't this just giving money to Baidu for nothing? What are they afraid of? The secrets behind this probably only the parties involved can understand.

Truth Three: Relying on manual labor rather than algorithms

Many people in the tech industry prefer to use Google instead of Baidu because Baidu often gives them laughable search results, while Google performs much more stably. This phenomenon represents two completely different development philosophies. Baidu believes in manual labor, while Google trusts algorithms more.

Baidu has always been a search engine that is easy to manually adjust. You can easily increase traffic for partners and your own products, and you can also easily reduce the authority or even reset the inclusion of competitors and uncooperative clients. Of course, many people say that Baidu does this because it needs to cooperate with a set of keyword filtering systems, but the fact is that when Google was still around, its search results were better than Baidu's.

This is like a dilapidated house; no matter how hard you try to repair it, it cannot be restored to its original condition, and the process of repairing may even accelerate its death. Sometimes we wonder if Baidu's search results will get worse in such an endless and stagnant pace. To reverse the situation, unless Baidu really redesigns a new search engine framework, but is this possible? At least now, I haven't seen any such trend. Baidu's focus is on how to copy new businesses and make money.

Truth Four: Employees find it hard to gain a sense of achievement

Do employees at Baidu have a sense of achievement? I wouldn't dare to say that lightly. But what Baidu employees mostly do are a few things: adjust search results, sell ads, and copy products. When work content is unjust or does not contribute positively to society, employees naturally feel inferior psychologically. They cannot create revolutionary products through their efforts and change the world like Google employees. Google has Android and Chrome, but looking back at Baidu, apart from making a bit more money, there has been no real change, and even the methods of making money are identical.

Working at such a company, where does the sense of achievement come from? While others are changing the world through technology, they are merely patching things up with technology. If you are an employee of Apple, Google, or even Tencent, you can sit down and talk freely. But if you are a Baidu employee, although everyone remains polite, there will inevitably be some differences in expressions and tones, just like seeing a rich second generation bossing people around. This has nothing to do with the employees, it is just Baidu's own problem.

Truth Five: Few achievements outside of search

Youa (a Q&A platform), Baidu Pay stagnate, and after great effort, Baidu Library was accused of being a piracy nest, and even sent users to jail. Baidu Baike's unreasonable copying was criticized by Wikipedia. Recently, Matian joined Baidu, established a social division, and created Baidu Talk Bar, which was a complete mess, and earlier it copied 51.com’s tactics of using beautiful women as temptations.

Apart from community products like Tieba, ZhiDao, Baike, and tool-type products like maps, Baidu has made almost no progress in other areas. With Baidu as a traffic entry point, such results are truly surprising. The best blessing for Baidu is: if you can't create well, then copy seriously, just like Tencent is doing.

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The Internet has perfectly inherited the old tricks of the trade, scheming, deceitful words, selfishness, and kicking someone when they're down. Baidu is no exception. There are many companies like Baidu, and playing dirty tricks actually makes it easier to succeed, while purely technical and product-driven companies often end up in tragic situations. This is something worth our vigilance, and it is also why most Chinese users do not trust Chinese Internet companies, because it is extremely difficult to remain pure in such an industrial environment.

Baidu is sick, but it is just a reflection of China's Internet industry. In comparison, the weakness of China's Internet industry deserves more thought. Apart from the false prosperity created by a huge population base, how many Internet companies and products do we really have to show off? How many Internet companies will be forced by circumstances to become another Baidu?