Opinion | For China, even a censored Google search engine would be better than Baidu
Bai Tongdong says even though Google would not offer the Chinese people unfettered access to information through its ‘Dragonfly’ search engine, it would still be better than the available alternatives
The irony is that the news was welcomed by ordinary Chinese, like “the delight of rain after a long drought”, to use a Chinese idiom. The news has not, of course, been officially reported, but the excitement has been palpable on social media in China.
Rather, Baidu has profited greatly from Google’s retreat, dominating, if not monopolising, the search engine space in China. Partly due to this quasi-monopoly, Baidu’s search engine often shamelessly yields to profit-driven results.
After Li’s statement, a widely circulated post showed how, if you search for the Chinese word that can be roughly translated as “tender” in English, the top Baidu results are “tender-looking” (voluptuous) women and their thinly veiled “tender” body parts, whereas the top Google results are what you would expect – how to keep chicken tender when cooking it, for example.
After reading this post, I did similar comparisons but Baidu’s search results seemed normal. Perhaps Baidu fixed its algorithm after the post went viral on social media or maybe the post was merely a joke. But, even if it was, it is a joke that is not far from reality.
