Baidu.com mp3 troubles
p2pnet.net News:- China’s Baidu.com search engine, partly-owned by Google, is in trouble over alleged Net copyright violations. But that hasn’t stopped it from pricing its initial public offering at $27 per share late, “cashing in on the high hopes riding on a startup with a large audience and puny profits,” says Business Week.
Requests for mp3 music files account for 21% of Baidu’s search requests, “a frequency that has provoked two lawsuits for alleged copyright infringement,” says the story, which earlier states:
” Although its business model mirrors Google, Baidu faces different challenges. China’s Communist government and its history of censorship poses one of the biggest potential stumbling blocks.
“In 2002, the government shut down Baidu for a week and fined the company for producing search results with content that were considered “socially harmful,” according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.”
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See:-
in trouble – Baidu copyright infringement, p2pnet, August 3, 2005
Business Week – China search engine raises IPO target, August 5, 2005
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August 5th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Typically one would expect business to exhibit “prudent” and “strategic” behaviours when interacting with their competitors.
And that is why it was surprising when on CNN / NBC, a 5 year old Chinese Search Engine company’s name was mentioned due to the upcoming IPO (Initial public offering).
And why would this be “bad business practice” (TM), you ask? Simply, because it gave “exposure” to Google’s competitor — and giving your competitor exposure is a “no no” in the sleazy world of business.
But, thanks to that news article I was made familiar with a search engine (that existed for 5 years) that I did not know about earlier.
And to boot, I’ve been looking for a “alternative” search engine for YEARS. I’ve even searched google, back in the days — but guess what?! No http://www.baidu.com results (mmm?) !
………. So I decided to give it a try, and guess what?!
It’s FAST, RELEVANT, SIMPLE, and last but not least……
….. Finally, a search engine for the REST of the World. I’ve got back relevant links in Chinese. This is critical because, you can’t (and shouldn’t) expect someone in Asia to be able to read English (yeah, try learning several foreign languages, like I am, it’s not easy!!!).
Plus, Google has PRIVACY issues… (more on this latter, if you’re a privacy advocate or Techno-phile)
And as a little bonus, I saw the mp3 link…. And I thought to myself, I’ve seen mp3 links on “other” websites before, but it never gave back any good and fast results, if any.
So I tried it, and to my surprise, it works incredibly fast. Now, honestly, “banning” mp3 search is just CENSORSHIP overboard.
That is what a search engine does, it searches for things relevant to the user! duh!
August 5th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
i agree totally i am an american but i have always felt that it is too hard for those overseas to get revalant search results without having to wade through a bunch of english search results so this search engine appears to be a very very good thing. also, i love the mp3 link that really is a godsend