Baidu in new ‘payments’ scandal
p2pnet news view | Advertising:- China search engine Baidu, severely castigated for its alleged role in the poisoned milk scandal, “yesterday apologized for accepting money from unlicensed medical companies for top search slots,” says China Daily.
Baidu lets companies buy keywords so they’ll appear higher in search results and it, “confirmed in a statement that some websites did use the page-rank bid service to promote false medical information, which was first spotted by China Central Television over the weekend,” says the story, going on:
“CCTV reported that Baidu had accepted money from illegal medical companies and placed their Web links on top of search results. Baidu’s marketing employees were also reported to have the knowledge of these, it said.”
The service is called page-rank bid and accounts for more than 80% of the company’s revenue, says the story.
“Insiders estimate that over 5 percent of Baidu’s revenue comes from pharmaceutical and medical companies.
The company’s business model, “which inserts ads in the natural search result without notice, has long been criticized for destroying the integrity of the search engine,” adds China Daily.
On the milk scandal, Baidu was said to have censored news in exchange for payment from dairy companies, said ChinaSmack.
Baidu acknowledged it’d been contacted, but denied it took money, said the story.
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poisoned milk scandal – Baidu suffers ‘poisoned milk’ backlash, September 20, 2008
China Daily - Baidu says sorry for false search results, November 19, 2008
ChinaSmack – Kidney Stone Gate: Fake Baby Milk Powder, Sanlu & Baidu?, September 12, 2008
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November 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Gee, I wounder if Google, Yahoo, Window Live, Mamma, etc… does that?
November 19th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Providing unlicensed medical companies with ranking spots, deleting tainted milk new links upon payment, deleting unfavorable news links, hosting unlicensed music files – and those are only the activities we know about that Baidu engages in. It really shows how rotten to the core they are ethically. Baidu and their Wall Street investors are unscrupulous in their quest for revenues – the latter’s financial meltdown has been recently documented, and it will be fitting if the former goes the same way too for it’s shocking role in the baby-killing tainted milk scandal.