internet - Baidu Europe launchesYes, well, kind of, explains the Zoekmachine Marketing Blog(Dutch), when it announces the Dutch initiative to launch a search engine with the name Baidu.eu in Europe. By acquiring the brand name "Baidu" for the whole of Europe, the company wants to use the high profile of the Chinese search engine and try to beat Google in Europe as Baidu did in China.
The company notes that is has already much traffic on its domain, although it only launched yesterday. According to general manager Peter Ufkes of Baidu.eu the ad rates of Google are far to high and he wants to compete with the US search engine on price.
If I was Robin Li, I would call my lawyer.
Update: Ah, just got a clarification. They only launched their website but are only starting to build a search engine and expect it to be ready in two years times. I think we are looking at a smart marketing trick without any search engine being build.
3 comments:
It will be interesting to see how Baidu competes when they don't have the home advantage of nationalism, their Chinese-language prowess, and the legal support of European courts to deep link to MP3 files. Will they be able to innovate?
Um, I misread your post. Heheh. Well, no worse than your posting things half a year old, though, right? :)
Anyway, when the real Baidu does finally make it to Europe it will still be interesting to see how they compete. I think there current move into Japan makes a lot of sense, though my first and third point are relevant there too.
They just want to sell Baidu its name in Europe... AJ
Post a Comment