Leading Chinese search engine Baidu has been sued by Chinese medical B2B marketplace Qmyy.com to prevent its site from being blocked or dropped by the engine. According to a factually lean report in China Daily:

Qmyy.com required Baidu to stop blocking its web pages from appearing on its search results and pay 1.106 million yuan ($161,460) for the losses that such acts have incurred. Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court accepted the case on Dec 26.

According to Li Changqing, a lawyer representing Qmyy.com, the company made the decision to file a lawsuit after it failed to reach an out-of-court settlement with Baidu.

This is a mirror image of suits that Google has defended against in the US in the past. It’s not unlike the KinderStart case of 2006, for example, which was won by Google. Qmyy apparently also filed an anti-trust complaint with the relevant regulatory authorities in China prior to filing the court action.

According to China IntelliConsulting Corp., Baidu has a roughly 65 percent market share in China, while Google is second with 22 percent. Others, including Yahoo, trail far behind. Baidu is the third largest search engine in the world by users and volume, by virtue of the huge size of the Chinese market. Baidu is also now in Japan.

Here are some comScore data on the Asia-Pacific search markets:

Happy New Years everyone! Below is a collection of logos for the special day from the search industry, reposted from my other search blog, here for everyone to see. On behalf of the Search Engine Land team, we would like to wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009!

Google’s Logo:

Yahoo’s Animated Logo:
Seems like Yahoo had a calendar that said December 31, but on New Years itself, they have nothing. Update, they had a logo for a few hours, a reader sent it to me, here it is:

Live.com’s Theme:

AOL’s Animated Logo:

Ask.com’s Theme:
2008…

2009…

DogPile’s Logo:

Baidu’s Logo:

BruceClay’s Logo:

Cre8asite Forums Logo:

Search Engine Roundtable’s Theme:

Happy Holidays from Search Engine Land! Below is a listing of special logos from Google and the search industry for the holidays. I also posted this at the Search Engine Roundtable, with links to the past five years of logos from our industry.

Everyone, have a happy holidays and thank you all for reading!

Google:

Yahoo:

Live.com:

DogPile:

Ask.com:

AOL.com:

Baidu:

FriendFeed:

Quintura:

BruceClay:

Hitwise:

Marketing Pilgrim:

PPC Heros:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Chinese internet giant sacks staff over paid for search listings from the Guardian reports Baidu has dropped the ads of four clients after finding out their medical licenses were false. According to the Guardian, this has resulted in Baidu’s ad revenue dropping ten to fifteen percent, plus the release of several ad representatives who have allegedly helped these false medical practices gain top ranking in Baidu.

Baidu’s stock fell 60% on the news that Baidu allegedly allowed unlicensed medical services adverse for medical practices. Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive told Xinhua:

Baidu employees who are found to have been involved in the scandal will be penalized… We have already fired people who helped fabricate documents for unlicensed suppliers.

We have removed the key words of all four clients mentioned in the report and have begun to double-check the licenses of all other hospitals and pharmacies on our client list.

One searcher told the China Central Television that he spent 10,000 yuan (~$1,500 us dollars) at one of those clinics. He later found out the procedure did not work and he had to go to a public hospital to fix the issue for only a 100 yuan.

I doubt Google validates the medical licenses of doctors who advertise for medical terms. But at the same time, this would not necessarily be a legal issue for Google – or would it? To be perfectly honest, I am not sure why Baidu is taking such heat for this? Maybe because they place their paid ads directly into the organic results? I would do some tests on this but my Chinese is less than adequate.

Music 2.0 has shared detailed screen captures and commentary on the launch of Google China Music Search. I personally cannot get to this site (”Sorry, Google is not your region provide you with the services they need” message appears”), but Music 2.0 does have screen captures and calls this Google service “more impressive” then many of the international counterparts.

Google China Music Search ranks music on the home page by some form of popularity metric. You can clearly search by artist name and other criteria. You can even download the DRM-free music in mp3 format at a rate of 192kbps. Google offers the ability to stream the music via a Flash player. Lyrics are also provided in a pop up window. The pages seem to contain advertisements but I am not sure if the revenue is shared with the musicians.

In February, Danny wrote a piece named Google To Fight Baidu In China With Legal Music Downloads? That article goes more into the other services available in China and some of the challenges Google will have in the Chinese market.

Baidu has been plagued with copyright lawsuits over music search in the past; the most recent news we have is that they beat the music labels in court.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson gave us a statement clarifying the ads in this application:

Google does not share in the revenue generated by advertising in connection with its Music Onebox product in China. All ads visible on the product in connection with the product run on Top100’s website and revenues from those ads are shared between Top100 and its music label and publisher partners.

China’s top Internet search engine, Baidu.com, censured for allegedly spreading racy photos from the International Herald Tribune reports Baidu has been censured by a government backed watchdog group for helping spread “filthy pictures.”

Internet users in China were reportedly using Baidu to find images of actor Edison Chen and several female stars in sexual acts that were spreading throughout the web. The images reportedly came from Hong Kong but then made their way into different regions of China, where the government keeps a “tighter watch” over Internet content. The watchgroup said Baidu “have become the platform for displaying and spreading these filthy pictures.”

The group added:

While other Beijing Internet companies have boycotted the spread of the racy photos, Baidu still hasn’t implemented effective blocking and obscuring of the photos, and has become defensive and procrastinated, leading to the stagnation of a large amount of pornographic, filthy pictures.

Beijing’s Internet self-discipline organization asked Baidu to make a public apology.

One of the key weaknesses Google has seemed to face in growing market share in China has been the fact that many people turn to Baidu to download music. Now the company may be fixing this, reports the Wall Street Journal:

Two years after Google Inc. began a big push in China, Baidu.com Inc. continues to dominate the country’s Internet search market, thanks in significant part to a controversial and legally risky offering: searches for free, unlicensed music downloads.

Now, Google is preparing a counterstrike, according to people close to the situation. The U.S. search giant is in the late planning stages of a joint venture with a Chinese online music company that would permit it to provide free — licensed — music downloads in China.

The service, which is likely to offer access to tunes from three global music companies as well as dozens of smaller players, could start in the next several weeks barring any last-minute hiccups. The music pact marks a turning point in Google’s battle with Baidu to gain dominance in an Internet market that is soon expected to surpass the U.S. this year in number of users.

The report notes that 7 percent of Baidu’s traffic is from access to free music, but that Baidu has been a target of copyright actions because of this. Of course, just last month Baidu won a copyright case against it (Baidu Beats Music Labels In Music Copyright Case Again), so those copyright issues haven’t seemed to slow it down over the years. In contrast, Yahoo China in December lost a case (Yahoo China Loses Case On Linking To Unlicensed Music).

Things might change more, however. A global music trade group is targeting both Baidu and Yahoo with new cases asking for thousands of sites to be removed.

Google hasn’t been targeted in music cases, the Wall Street Journal says, since it hasn’t offered a music search feature. To avoid such actions, plans are said to involve files that are digitally watermarked. These files, from a variety of record labels, are already offered via Top100.cn. Google is said to be partnering with Top100.cn to provide enhanced search and other features.

For some background on the importance of music search to Baidu historically, the China Online Search Marketing Survey Report (PDF) in 2005 found that more people were searching at Google for web results, reference info, shopping, and business material than at Baidu. Baidu’s big search area was downloadable music. Similarly, a Keynote study in 2006 found that Google beat Baidu in many customer satisfaction areas, including general search quality, image search quality, and news search quality. But it was Baidu that ranked tops for music search quality.

For further discussion, see related stories on Techmeme.

Baidu aims to take on Google and Yahoo in Japan from Reuters reports Baidu has relaunched in Japan at http://www.baidu.jp/. The press release called the launch a “formal launch of its Japanese language search engine.”

As part of this launch, Baidu revamped the Japanese home page and added blog search. Baidu currently holds a 70-percent market share in China and hopes to replicate that success in Japan. Here is a comparison of Baidu’s main site in China and the new Baidu Japan site, which is more portal in nature.

Baidu China:

Baidu Japan:

Robin Li, Baidu’s chairman and CEO, said:

We are very excited to officially enter the Japanese search market. With Baidu’s strengths in developing user-focused Chinese language search and the qualified team we have on the ground in Japan, and given the success we have already encountered after nearly one year of testing our beta site, we are confident that we can provide a high quality Japanese language search engine.

Beijing court sides with Baidu in music piracy case from the AFP reports that Baidu has won a copyright case in a Beijing appeals court against the music labels. The court upheld the decision that Baidu is not guilty of property rights infringement for displaying links to web sites that are offering illegal music downloads.

Baidu first won this case back in November 2006. What is interesting is that Yahoo recently lost a case in China on a very similar issue, i.e., linking to unlicensed music.

People’s High Court of Beijing brought the case to an end this Sunday. Baidu beat several major international music labels, such as EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music, and Universal Music.

Baidu.com says CFO killed in China accident from the AFP reports Shawn Wang, Baidu’s CFO, died on December 27. Wang was in a fatal accident during a holiday vacation in China.

He joined Baidu in 2004 and helped Baidu with their extremely successful IPO and NASDAQ listing.

Robin Li, chairman and chief executive of Baidu, issued a statement:

We are all completely shocked and deeply saddened by this tragic news. Shawn’s leadership and vision helped transform Baidu into a leading US public company, and his presence will be greatly missed. Shawn was not only a tremendous leader within our company, but also a wonderful friend to us all. We extend our deepest sympathy and most sincere condolences to Shawn’s family.

Will this impact Baidu’s future success? Baidu.com CFO Wang’s death not expected to hurt operations: broker from MarketWatch has more on that.