Silicon Valley would like to break the Chinese code, because of the expanding internet market in China. However, there’s one major problem. Silicon Valley is currently being blocked in China. While Google and Facebook currently dominate the global market, the other tech giants in China appear to be gaining some ground. Baidu and Alibaba are two major competitors.
You may by chance have heard of Alibaba. “On September 5, 2014, the group—in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—set a US$60- to $66- per-share price range for its scheduled initial public offering (IPO), the final price of which would be determined after an international roadshow. The listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was expected to raise more than $20 billion, making it the largest technology listing in U.S. history, exceeding that of Facebook.”
Headquartered in the city of Beijing, Baidu is a major search engine in China, rivaling that of Google in the United States. Baidu was established in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. In May of 2014, Baidu ranked 5th, according to the Alexa internet rankings.
“In 1994, Robin Li 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.”
In 1996, Li developed RankDex, an algorithm for search engines.
Baidu is really big in China and it keeps growing. Adding to its many accolades, “on July 18, 2014, the company launched a Brazilian version of the search engine, Baidu Busca.” Baidu has broken the code in Brazil.
According to Marketing China, Baidu is the number one in the market, with 64.5% of the users, the closest competitor, 360, who launched its own search engine in August, has already taken hold of 10.2% users.
