Baidu has become commercialized, while Google has become more academic.

When you type "abortion" into the Baidu search bar, it's no surprise that the first search result is a local hospital, and the sidebar is filled with information about abortion surgery hospitals. A few days later, when you type "abortion" into the Google search bar, what stands out might be an academic paper written by a university professor on the subject of abortion.

Baidu’s promotion and bidding ranking system allows too much useless information to occupy prominent positions, which is also Baidu's way of making money. In an era where information is increasingly abundant, it is becoming harder for us to find useful in-depth information, and this situation is particularly prominent domestically. One drawback of arranging information in chronological order is that classic but older information isn't as easy to find, at which point, even good wine suffers from being in a deep alley.

Although most users just want simple and clear answers when searching, according to Google data, about 10% of users search for in-depth articles or academic papers. In the coming days, Google's search engine will launch a new feature that highlights such in-depth articles on the search results page.

Google technical staff Pandu Nayak stated:

"I am very pleased to see people continue to invest time and money in producing in-depth content that makes us think, content that remains highly valuable months or even years after publication. The new feature highlights and helps you find it, and in addition to articles from well-known publications, Google's new search feature can also make it easier for you to find excellent articles from lesser-known publications and blogs."

This sounds like a great feature; ensuring that useful in-depth information and academic articles aren't drowned out is certainly commendable. But what qualifies as useful information? In our country, where abortion rates remain high, some may consider the hospitals promoted by Baidu to be useful information. Google engineers leave everything to the 'algorithm' and do not manually intervene in the results of in-depth information searches. As for bidding rankings, those are likely non-existent.

Of course, many papers and publications are copyright-protected, so Google might introduce related measures, such as free access only upon the first click. Displaying information based on its depth also gives lesser-known authors and publishers who still produce excellent works the opportunity to prioritize showcasing their content.

So why has Google introduced this feature? Simply put, Google wants to ensure the quality of information rather than allow complex information and daily news to monopolize all attention. Caroline O'Donovan from Nieman Lab points out that highlighting in-depth information can satisfy and stimulate the needs of those who crave deep reading, reducing the demand and reliance on general, roughly edited information like Wikipedia.

It’s worth criticizing the quality of information on Baidu Encyclopedia here. While this crowd-sourced information editing model can indeed pool collective wisdom, its disadvantages are also quite evident. Many false and inaccurate pieces of information fill it, and some individuals with editing permissions maliciously alter correct information. Not long ago, there was an incident where someone described the "Chengdu" entry in Baidu Encyclopedia as "the capital of the People's Republic of China, with the strongest overall strength nationwide".

In this age, we don't lack information; what we lack is useful and in-depth information. Therefore, I support Google highlighting useful, in-depth, and academic information without affecting the display of regular information. From the user's perspective, users can more easily search for information that was previously hard to find, and follow the information trail to discover the author and publisher, among others.

Prior to this, Google's search services already included specialized academic searches (Google Scholar) and its own digital library. Google's own engineers also publish professional papers; recently, Joseph Bonneau's paper titled "The science of guessing" won the Science of Security Competition award established by the NSA.

Let's temporarily forget about business and the market for a moment; perhaps a more academic Google could be a pretty good direction.

The title image comes from: Flickr