Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, products, and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and Internet companies in the world. The holding company of the group is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Baidu was incorporated in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Baidu has origins in RankDex, an earlier search engine developed by Robin Li in 1996, before he founded Baidu in 2000.
Baidu offers various services, including a Chinese search engine, as well as a mapping service called Baidu Maps. Baidu offers about 57 search and community services, such as Baidu Baike (an online encyclopedia), Baidu Wangpan (a cloud storage service), and Baidu Tieba (a keyword-based discussion forum).
Baidu Global Business Unit (GBU) is responsible for Baidu's international products and services for markets outside of China. Baidu GBU's product portfolio includes keyboard apps Simeji and Facemoji Keyboard, content recommendation platform popIn, augmented reality network OmniAR, Japanese smart projector popIn Aladdin, and ad platform MediaGo, which is focused on Chinese advertisers looking to reach overseas users. In 2017, Baidu GBU entered into a partnership with Snap Inc. to act as the company's official ad reseller for Snapchat in Greater China, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. The partnership was extended in 2019.
In 2018, Baidu divested the "Global DU business" portion of its overseas business, which developed a series of utility apps including ES File Explorer, DU Caller, Mobojoy, Photo Wonder and DU Recorder, etc. This business now operates independently of Baidu under the name DO Global.
Baidu has the second largest search engine in the world, and held a 76.05% market share in China's search engine market. In December 2007, Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index. As of May 2018, Baidu's market cap rose to US$99 billion. In October 2018, Baidu became the first Chinese firm to join the United States-based computer ethics consortium Partnership on AI.
History
Early development
In 1994, Robin Li (Li Yanhong, 李彦宏) joined IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones and Company, where he helped develop software for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. He also worked on developing better algorithms for search engines and remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997.
In 1996, while at IDD, Li developed the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for search engines results page ranking and received a US patent for the technology. Launched in 1996, RankDex was the first search engine that used hyperlinks to measure the quality of websites it was indexing. Li referred to his search mechanism as "link analysis," which involved ranking the popularity of a web site based on how many other sites had linked to it. It predated the similar PageRank algorithm used by Google two years later in 1998; Google founder Larry Page referenced Li's work as a citation in some of his U.S. patents for PageRank. Li later used his RankDex technology for the Baidu search engine.
Baidu was incorporated on January 18, 2000, by Robin Li and Eric Xu. In 2001, Baidu allowed advertisers to bid for ad space and then pay Baidu every time a customer clicked on an ad, predating Google's approach to advertising. In 2003, Baidu launched a news search engine and picture search engine, adopting a special identification technology capable of identifying and grouping the articles.
Baidu went public on Wall Street through a variable interest entity (VIE) based in the Cayman Islands on August 5, 2005.
On July 31, 2012, Baidu announced that it would team up with Sina to provide mobile search results.
On November 18, 2012, Baidu announced that it would be partnering with Qualcomm to offer free cloud storage to Android users with Snapdragon processors.
On August 2, 2013, Baidu launched its Personal Assistant app, designed to help CEOs, managers and the white-collar workers manage their business relationships.
On May 16, 2014, Baidu appointed Dr. Andrew Ng as chief scientist. Dr. Ng will lead Baidu Research in Silicon Valley and Beijing.
On July 18, 2014, the company launched a Brazilian version of the search engine, Baidu Busca.
On October 9, 2014, Baidu announced acquisition of Brazilian local e-commerce site Peixe Urbano.
