Google Versus Baidu Who Would Win?
Throwing back to the years when I was still an elementary school kid in China, I could clearly remember the sadness I had after realizing I had no access to Google anymore, which means I couldn’t read some of my favorite Harry Potter fanfictions. After Google was banned due to reasons like the Chinese government’s strict censorship and value difference in Eastern and Western culture, Baidu, the biggest search engine in the Chinese market, has monopolized everything online till now. Recently, I read a news saying that Google is ready to go back to China but maybe with a stricter version, indicating that it will filter the sensitive politics news. Personally, I think it is a good thing for China to have the largest search engine coming back because apparently, Baidu has been somewhat spoiled. The way it makes a profit is by receiving money from ads sponsors. So while browsing some random websites, the audience can easily see some links or pictures of porn sites. Besides, some informal or unregistered companies make use of it, sending out a lot of fake news, which even led to accidental casualties. If you search the same word “White and Smooth” (in Chinese) both in Baidu and Google, you could see pure color pictured presented in Google but some erotic prostitute pictures in Baidu. Having a strong competitor in the market is a good motivation to improve the quality of a product. I do believe with the intervention of Google, Baidu would switch at least some of its attention from making money to retaining the users by promoting what ads they put on the websites.
As we mentioned in the lecture, the internet is a place where people put down their queries and get the answers. Besides, people can also publish their information to serve its audience. However, Baidu restricts its users from making both. Furthermore, Google has a larger strong component circle because websites are mostly connected with each other without any barriers. Nevertheless, for Baidu, even though you can see one link like a relatable web or references in an essay, sometimes you don’t have the power to reach out to that web. The Internet is something that shouldn’t be controlled by the subjective opinions but present information that will benefit all mankind. Thus, in this case, I believe a large strong component circle should be the conceptual model of a good network structuring. I do want to see how Google shapes Chinese internet again but I doubt it will be a little impact since this time it’s a censored search engine.
link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/technology/china-google-censored-search-engine.html