European Firm Threatens Baidu Search Engine
Baidu Europe hopes to extort big bucks out of popular search engine.
Remember Baidu? Not the Chinese search giant, but the European software firm that has promoted its trademarks and baidu.tld domain names for sale? Well, it’s putting its brand and domain names up for sale. And it’s not hiding the fact that it hopes the big search engine buys them.
In a brash press release regarding the sale on eBay, the firm specifically cites Baidu the search firm:
In 2008, Baidu Europe (baidu.eu) disclosed that it had the intention of selling its brand name and domain names due to the rapid growth of Baidu Inc (Nasdaq: BIDU), a very popular Chinese search engine. Baidu Inc. is now considered to be the world’s second largest search engine, the leading search engine in China. 76 percent of online searches in China are done at Baidu.com, compared to only 19.8 percent at Google, as stated by Search Engine Land. There is a fierce competition between Baidu.com and Google for worldwide search engine domination that is only expected to get more heated.
As if that’s not enough, the press release is clear regarding the threat to Baidu Inc. It states it has by now talked to a number of interested parties, counting “an American adult porn search engine”. The message is clear: Baidu Inc. needs to buy the trademarks and domains or risk having Baidu.eu and a number of other country code domains land on a porn site.
