Baidu

Early development

In 1994, Robin Li (Pinyin: Lǐ Yànhóng, Chinese: 李彦宏) 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. He also worked on developing better algorithms for search engines and remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997.

In 1996, while at IDD, Li developed the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for search engines results page ranking and received a US patent for the technology. Launched in 1996, RankDex was the first search engine that used hyperlinks to measure the quality of websites it was indexing. Li referred to his search mechanism as "link analysis," which involved ranking the popularity of a web site based on how many other sites had linked to it. It predated the similar PageRank algorithm used by Google two years later in 1998; Google founder Larry Page referenced Li's work as a citation in some of his U.S. patents for PageRank. Li later used his RankDex technology for the Baidu search engine.

Baidu was incorporated on 18 January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. In 2001, Baidu allowed advertisers to bid for ad space then pay Baidu every time a customer clicked on an ad, predating Google's approach to advertising. In 2003, Baidu launched a news search engine and picture search engine, adopting a special identification technology capable of identifying and grouping the articles.

2005: Public Listing on NASDAQ

Baidu went public on Wall Street through a variable interest entity (VIE) based in the Cayman Islands on 5 August 2005. In 2007, Chinese government and Chinese industry sources stated that Baidu received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a full-fledged news website. Thus Baidu is able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. Baidu was the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license. Baidu started its Japanese language search service, run by Baidu Japan, the company's first regular service outside of China in 2008. The Japanese search engine closed on 16 March 2015.

On 31 July 2012, Baidu announced that it would team up with Sina to provide mobile search results. On 18 November 2012, Baidu announced that it would be partnering with Qualcomm to offer free cloud storage to Android users with Snapdragon processors. On 2 August 2013, Baidu launched its Personal Assistant app, designed to help CEOs, managers and the white-collar workers manage their business relationships. On 16 May 2014, Baidu appointed Andrew Ng as chief scientist. Ng will lead Baidu Research in Silicon Valley and Beijing. On 18 July 2014, the company launched a Brazilian version of the search engine, Baidu Busca. On 9 October 2014, Baidu announced acquisition of Brazilian local e-commerce site Peixe Urbano.

2017: Launch of Autonomous Driving Business

In April 2017, Baidu announced the launch of its Apollo project (Apolong), a self-driving vehicle platform, in a bid to help drive the development of autonomous cars including vehicle platform, hardware platform, open-source software platform and cloud data services. Baidu plans to launch this project in July 2017, before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020. In September 2017, Baidu launched a $1.5billion autonomous driving fund to invest in as many as 100 autonomous driving projects over the ensuing three years. At the same time, Apollo open-source software version 1.5 was also launched.

In June 2017, Baidu partnered with Continental and Bosch, auto industry suppliers, on automated driving and connected cars. In July 2017, Baidu GBU entered into a partnership with Snap Inc. to act as the company's official ad reseller for Snapchat in Greater China, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. The partnership was extended in 2019.

In September 2017, Baidu rolled out a new portable talking translator that can listen and speak in several different languages. Smaller than a typical smartphone, the 140-gram translation device can also be used as a portable Wi-Fi router and is able to operate on networks in 80 countries. It is still under development. Baidu will also be inserting artificial intelligence (AI) technology into smartphones, through its deep learning platform. At the same period, it has also led a joint investment of US$12billion with Alibaba Group, Tencent, JD.com and Didi Chuxing, acquiring 35% of China Unicom's stakes.

Baidu has started to invest in deep learning research and is integrating new deep learning technology into some of its apps and products, including Phoenix Nest. Phoenix Nest is Baidu's ad-bidding platform.

In April 2012 Baidu JDC long live applied for a patent for its "DNA copyright recognition" technology. This technology automatically scans files that are uploaded by Internet users, and recognizes and filters out content that may violate copyright law. This allows Baidu to offer an infringement-free platform.

In April 2022, Baidu announced they gained permits from China to provide the first driverless taxis. The company aim to provide driverless ride-hailing services to the public and have 10 autonomous cars set to begin offering rides to passengers within a 23-square-mile area in suburban begin beginning 28 April 2022.

In July 2022, Baidu unveiled the Apollo RT6, a driverless vehicle that is planned to join Baidu's driverless fleet in 2023.

Controversies

By the late 2010s Baidu's search engine had come under criticism for being a walled garden largely directing users to contents published on platforms under Baidu's control rather than acting as a gateway to the contents of the wider internet, partly as a result of Baidu's own actions, but also as a result of rival internet companies refusing to allow their content to be indexed by Baidu. In a viral 2019 blog post entitled "Baidu search engine is dead", communications scholar Fang Kecheng proclaimed that “Baidu.com is no longer a place for you to search for content on China’s internet, but rather an internal search for Baidu content... It won’t lead you to good quality food for the spirit from China’s internet, but content hoarded at home, gone bad.” citing the frequent high placement of results from low quality self-published blogposts on Baijiahao, a blogging platform run by Baidu.

U.S. 'Military' Listing

In June 2026 the United States Department of Defense added the company to its list of "Chinese military companies."

Baidu search advertising and the death of Wei Zexi

In 2016, Baidu's P4P search results reportedly contributed to the death of a student who tried an experimental cancer therapy he found online. The 21-year-old college student was named Wèi Zéxī (魏则西), who studied in Xidian University. Wei was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. He found the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps (武警北京市总队第二医院) through the search engine Baidu, on which the hospital had been promoting itself. The treatment proved unsuccessful and Wèi died in April 2016.

After Wei's family spent around 200,000 yuan (around US$31,150) for treatment in the hospital, Wei Zexi died on 12 April 2016. The incident triggered massive online discussions after Wei's death. On 2 May 2016, Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the top watchdog for China's Internet space, dispatched a team of investigators to Baidu. One report claimed medical advertising makes up for 30% of Baidu's ad revenue, much of which comes from for-profit hospitals that belong to the "Putian Network", a collection of hospitals across the country founded by medical entrepreneurs associated with the Putian region of Fujian province. The investigation led Chinese regulators to impose several restrictions on Baidu, including adding disclaimers to promotional content and establishing channels for complaints about Baidu services.

Commercialization of Baidu Tieba

Despite the popularity of Baidu Tieba, for a long time up until 2014 Baidu Tieba was not profitable to operate for Baidu, resulting in Baidu searching for ways to increase revenue from the platform. In 2015-2016, Baidu Tieba came under major controversy for Baidu's practice, which began in 2014, of selling moderator rights to individual forums without the consent of users or the original moderators. In January 2016, it was reported that a forum dedicated to the disease haemophilia was sold by Baidu to a hospital, which removed the original moderation team, and used the forum to post advertising, removing posts complaining about the change. Later that year, Baidu pledged to stop selling the moderation rights to forums. Sixth Tone wrote that selling off the moderation rights for individual forums made relatively little revenue for Baidu and resulted in many boards becoming "advertising spaces for commercial ventures". In 2015, the moderation rights to the Tieba forum dedicated to the video game Minecraft was sold off to a similar mobile clone, "Our World", causing significant controversy. A similar incident occurred the same year when the Tieba forum of the video game Kantai Collection was sold to a company that operated an illegal pirate version of the game in China, again resulting in major controversy.

DO Global subsidiary ad-fraud in downloaded apps

On 20 April 2019, it was reported that several applications for Android devices developed by the subsidiary company, DO Global (formerly DU Group), were surreptitiously running revenue enhancing background programs on user devices since at least 2016. These programs, part of six known applications developed by the company, and downloaded hundreds of millions times, were clicking on internet ads – even when the devices were idle, and unbeknownst to end users, to increase revenue generated by "clicks". Just one of the apps, all of which were available on Google Play Store, had been downloaded 50 million times alone and carried a user rating of 4.5 stars by tens of thousands.