How many internets are there? Pampered by Google, most of us have got used to thinking of the online world as one seamlessly interconnected whole: 30bn pages all instantly accessible via the right search term and the click of a mouse. Yet with the number of people online (1.6bn) likely to double by 2020, we need to start thinking about internets rather than the internet: about a world in which regional idiosyncrasies are as important as global trends and where no single website, no matter how good, can be the key that unlocks every door. And, as with so many other 21st-century trends, to understand this future we must begin by looking at China.
China is already home to the world’s largest online community, with 298m users to America’s 227m. And the most visited website in China is not Google, but a home-grown company still relatively unknown in the west: Baidu. Founded in Beijing in 2000, Baidu today commands over 70 per cent of Chinese search requests, with Google trailing at under 25 per cent. The fact that Google isn’t top is not in itself unprecedented—outside countries that use the Roman alphabet, Google is often smaller than regional rivals. Baidu is especially interesting, however, both because the Chinese-language internet is so large, and because Baidu’s particular package of tools and features has proved so resilient to Google’s considerable efforts to catch up. It’s a resilience that suggests both the limited ability of any one company to dominate an increasingly divergent internet—and some of the ways in which other companies might carve out similar niches elsewhere.
Google’s latest Chinese gambit, announced earlier this year, was to offer hundreds of thousands of free downloadable songs within China—a canny attempt to boost its status in a country where 99 per cent of music distribution occurs illegally. (The Chinese government’s laissez-faire attitude towards copyright borders on the supine.) Yet Baidu has largely held its own. Its music search and social messaging features are better than Google’s and have been around for longer—Baidu began its life as a search tool for mp3s. The company also enjoys a cosy relationship with China’s notorious censors as well as with many of the country’s biggest online businesses. Then there’s the fact that it simply feels more Chinese. The brand identity is aggressively patriotic—its name is from an 800-year-old Song dynasty poem and means “hundreds of times”—while its latest viral advert features a western interloper being vanquished by a Chinese hero.
China’s internet is at once a more fraught and a more intimate arena than the west’s. Censorship has bred many secret codes and evasions that allow off-limits topics to be discussed. These codes in turn have formed a satirical online subculture of their own—most famously in the form of the “ten mythical beasts of Baidu”: animal names that look innocent enough in written characters, but when spoken are recognisable as profanities. (These include the elusive cao ni ma, or “grass mud horse,” allegedly a species of alpaca, but actually a way of smuggling into discussions a phrase that when spoken sounds exactly like the Mandarin for “fuck your mother.”)
As a character-based language, web pages in Chinese need only half as much text as western equivalents to say something—and are read in a different manner on screen, with the eye leaping far more easily from location to location than it does with an alphabet-based language. Then there’s the immense popularity of low-tech bulletin-board style forums. These suit the patchy internet access in many areas, but are also easy to set up in a country with the ever-present threat that sites will suddenly be shut down on a censor’s whim. Limited access to websites outside China has also helped to spur the growth of homegrown forums; and there’s a dearth of quality international journalism, although local discussions are often expert and heated.
How much does all this matter? Those waiting for Baidu to take over the world will have to be patient. Although the company recently launched a service in Japan, its two operations seem insignificant next to Google, which supports over 100 languages and has sites based in almost 200 different territories. Yet even in the face of Google’s sheer scale, Baidu shows how local, specific services can command both loyalty and profits—and shape the future direction of the web. For, as more of the world’s citizens arrive online, the internet will become not just increasingly polyglot, but increasingly poly-platform. Growth in access via mobile phones, for instance, is far outstripping that via computers in Africa and parts of Asia. Google and other giants like Yahoo! are investing heavily in mobiles and in extending their international services. But no matter how good their products, their current level of global dominance will be hard to maintain in a larger, more diverse internet.
Baidu is likely to hold the top spot in China for some time. And, more importantly, there’s every indication that similar services will be able to rule regional markets elsewhere. None of which means you should start shedding Google stock yet: given its record and resources, it’s likely to remain the best worldwide search service, even in the face of competition from new arrivals like Microsoft’s Bing. But global search is no longer the only game in town—and, while the last decade saw Google’s growth match the rapid and seemingly effortless expansion of an open internet, we are now entering an era requiring more effort; a world of blocked and unreliable pipes, multiple platforms, and a wider divide between the types and qualities of internet connection. For all the technical marvels set to bring us closer together over the 21st century, the biggest online story may be one about our growing differences.
Thanks to Anthony House of Google and Sam Geall of chinadialogue.net for their help in researching this piece
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Comments (6):
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.
Good point, man. I am a native chinese and use google.com as my english search engine. I have to say that google.cn isn’t as good as google.com that much.Baidu has its own advantage on Chinese language which you westerners have to admit.
There is a mistake i have to point out.The name ‘Baidu’ is the pingyin of ‘??’?which comes from a very famous chinese poetry.That’s true.But it isn’t ‘aggressively patriotic’ at all.It orginal meaning is that “After searching her for hundreds of times, she is standing rihgt there shinning”.I think is more romantic than so called ‘aggressively patriotic’….