China's present, the world's future
With the recent news of Google’s travails against censorship in China (its site was blocked for several hours amid accusations that it was helping to “spread pornography” and break China’s strict, if opaque, laws on what is and isn’t legitimate online), it seems a good time to be talking about the future of search. Not the future of global search which, I think we can safely assume, will be dominated by Google for years to come. But the future of an altogether more regional internet. In my science and technology piece this month, I cast an eye over the booming field of regional search: and, in particular, at China, which now boasts both the world’s largest online community – with almost 300m Chinese citizens online – and a regional internet in which Google is but a minor player compared to the might of home-grown Chinese search engine Baidu.
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Good point, but maybe regional search is the wrong example?
Google may be vulnerable in search on some fronts, but its ability to localize doesn’t seem to be one of them. Local players are emerging as leaders in many service areas on the local language web. In search however Google is not far off omnipresent.
China is often cited as an example where Google hasn’t succeeded in search but even here, pending recent difficulties, Google has been making impressive progress, eating into Baidu’s share year-on-year. I only know one market where Google is genuinely struggling – Korea (home to another online media conglomerate to watch, Naver). Anybody know of any others?
Yes then to a new multi-market internet populated by innovative local leaders – that’s already happening. But in search? That seems to be the one part of the web where internet users around the world are still choosing the same company.
Google has been making impressive progress, eating into Baidu’s share year-on-year?
Various figures get reported, but Baidu has been more than holding its own over time: “Baidu has grown over the past few years with 62.2 percent market share in 2008, up from 59.3 percent in 2007, according to Analysys International, a research company in Beijing. Google’s share in China for 2008 was much lower, 27.8 percent.”
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Baidu-Gains-at-Google-s-Expense/story.xhtml?story_id=11200CI86X00&full_skip=1
Other countries in which Google notably struggles:
Russia (it has just over 20 per cent share, compared to almost 60 per cent from Russian companies like Yandex)
Czech Republic (Seznam.cz is far bigger, with over 60 per cent on its own)
Yahoo! Japan wins out too, at just over 50 per cent
And, as you said, Naver has over 70 per cent in South Korea
Search is especially interesting precisely because Google has had such huge (and deserved) success so far: they are absolutely brilliant at scalability. I agree it will remain the global best for years to come. But I think we can no longer take it as read that Google’s growth is synonymous with the internet’s growth. And China is not the only censorious regime that’s keen to have a local player it can push around. Think of part of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Not everyone loves California-style freedom…
Thanks for taking time to reply Tom. I did enjoy your piece, and this is really a quibble, but maybe there’s a chance Google will remain a near-ubiquitous player in search, locally as well as globally?
After all, Google is still number two in search in most of the markets you mention, despite the semantic and cultural challenges it faces. In Japan the gap isn’t that much.
I say quibble because I think there is another battle Google is losing locally – the ability to develop a business outside of search.
Here Google has been far less successful, unlike local rivals such as Naver in Korea and Yahoo Japan, already making money from areas such as social networks and e-commerce. Baidu is branching out into new areas too.
In some ways these experiments – or perhaps, as they are already making money, we should call them business models – are prototypes for internet firms in the future. Google is chasing this goal too, but seems to be much further behind than it is in search.
I think there are only a handful of markets, such as Korea, where Google has genuinely been sidelined in search. It remains the local search leader in most countries around the world, and a credible challenger in many of the others.
I agree, Baidu shows no sign of losing its search crown in China. Nevertheless Google also increased its market share in China last year (according to the same source you quote), and by more than Baidu – closing the gap between the two, albeit slightly.
In terms of search revenue, Google can claim an even bigger share of the China market – 32.8% in the first quarter of this year, up from 25.8% for the same period in 2008 (iResearch).
Statistics aside, Google is a distant number two in China. It’s a strong number two however, ahead of numerous other players, both local and international, and providing Baidu with real competition, in a market where its ethos is at odds with the powers that be.
Maybe Google’s current difficulties in China mark the limits of ambition, and with it – as you say – the end of the global internet.
However, even in places where Google is supposed to be struggling, its track record of tapping into local search markets puts it in good stead to feature prominently in the emerging regional web.
I could be wrong, but there’s a chance the expansion of the web and Google, in search at least, might go hand in hand for a while yet.
I read the article about this in the July issue of the mag. I think you have made the rather silly error of confusing Google for the internet. Google is a search engine. To state that Google is the internet, is just plain misleading. Sure Google is a web giant and one of the leading innovators and providers of services on the web, but so too are Facebook, Amazon, Twitter the list goes on. While it’s only a minor point it’s annoying. Hence the comment.
The point I’m (trying to) make is that other people have seen the growth of Google as representative of the nature of and growth of the internet itself – that is, both have for the last decade enjoyed exponential and seemingly effortless scalable international growth – and both have seemed to be arenas where anything you want to know can be found, and almost all knowledge is potentially equally accessible if you know its location or a few key details.
This is something I think is going to be less true in the future, for the reasons set out in the article: with Africa, the middle east and Asia coming online in greater and greater numbers, the 21st century internet of two billion or more is going to be a more local beast in some ways, with greater regional variations in access, content, censorship, etc. And looking at companies like Baidu allows us to learn a few important lessons right now about what works on a regionally diverse internet: lessons that looking at transnational giants like Google, for all its virtues, can’t teach us. Hence it’s important to get past the “what would Google do?” notion that looking at one company, however brilliant, can tell you everything you need to know about the nature of digital success.
Of course, I may be wrong. As Mike Savage, who I think does understand what I’m getting at very well, puts it above, “[Google's] track record of tapping into local search markets puts it in good stead to feature prominently in the emerging regional web” – and this is a very good point – but I do think that, for instance, Google’s position on censorship and its company ethos mean that it is unlikely to be an officially-sanctioned favourite in several nations just beginning to emerge as substantial web presences (freedom of information is not a priority in parts of the middle east and Africa, for instance) – while Baidu shows us that national feeling can itself be a significant factor, if it’s tapped into with sufficient skill by a local company.
Any clearer?