Baidu's Censored Answer to Wikipedia

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Legally Controversial Searches

The company certainly has much more going for it than an understanding of the Chinese government. It also caters to the tastes and preferences of local users. It offers a number of different services in addition to search. One of its most popular is Baidu Zhidao, or Baidu Knows, where users post questions and answer them to build up a searchable knowledge base. It also lets users do things that are legally controversial, like searches for MP3 music files that can be downloaded for free. "Baidu offers some services that Google does not or cannot offer," says Peter Lu, managing partner of IntelliConsulting, a Beijing Internet market research company.

IntelliConsulting's recent "China Search Engine Survey Report" found that Google achieved a higher "satisfactory" rating among users than Baidu. But a majority of Internet users in China still select Baidu as their primary search engine because it offers a variety of features and a more stable connection than its rivals. "Search quality is not the only and not even the main concern for most Chinese Internet search engine users," says Lu.

Baidu, in a notice posted on its Web site, says that "it is Baidu's policy to attach great importance to the protection of copyright and comply with all the applicable [Chinese] laws," and that it will remove links to copyrighted music "in accordance with the applicable laws, regulations, and binding measures." Still, Baidu has been hit with lawsuits for its music links (BusinessWeek.com, 9/10/07), including one by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Volunteers Must Register

Baidu Baike was quietly launched last May, about six months after access to the Chinese and English versions of Wikipedia was blocked in China. The name Baike, which literally means one hundred subjects, is Chinese for encyclopedia. The service was immediately popular. It hit 100,000 entries during its first month, quickly surpassing the Chinese-language Wikipedia. Now, according to the company, Baidu Baike has nearly 1 million entries, making it far and away the largest Chinese online encyclopedia.

Baidu's offering is different from Wikipedia's in several important ways. While both are built with user contributions, Baidu requires people to register if they want to edit any entries. In addition, Baidu has site moderators that review all content that goes into the encyclopedia. This allows the site to excise any topics that are considered controversial.

While Baidu Baike administrators have kept the site clear of politically sensitive content, they have not cleaned out some articles that include material nearly identical to the blocked Chinese Wikipedia. For example, sections of the entries on computer science and the French painter Toulouse-Lautrec are almost identical to that on Wikipedia, although no credit is given to Wikipedia for the material.

Baike Users Don't Credit Wikipedia

Wikipedia does allow a wide range of its content to be used by others, as long as proper attribution is provided. Other examples of nearly identical entries include those on manifest destiny, medieval cuisine, and the Japanese cartoon character Aria. "They do not respect the license at all," said Florence Nibart-Devouard, chair of the board of trustees at Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit organization behind Wikipedia, during a conference in August.

Baidu takes issue with the criticism. The company points out that it is users, not the company, who have built up the encyclopedia through their contributions. Baidu Baike "is a platform for user-generated content," says the company's public relations firm in response to questions from BusinessWeek, adding that "the platform has attracted a high level of user participation and traffic."

Baidu declined to discuss in detail what kinds of content are blocked from the site.