Baidu’s Huge Growth at Google’s Expense

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 8, 1:28PM EDT · Published Apr 29, 6:57AM EDT

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Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has a search business, Google, that has an average market share of 70% across the United States and most of Europe. Yet it barely has been able to get a toehold in China. Its rival in the People’s Republic, Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), owns almost all the market in that country, which has the world’s largest population of internet users, and the world’s largest cell phone market as well.

Baidu’s posted revenue for the most recent quarter was $2.5 billion, up 31%. The figure is small next to Google’s, except it is in only one country.

The balance of the Baidu’s metrics were stunning:

Mobile search monthly active users (MAUs) were 663 million for the month of March 2016, an increase of 9% year-over-year

Mobile maps MAUs were 321 million for the month of March 2016, an increase of 19% year-over-year

Gross merchandise value (GMV) for Transaction Services totaled RMB16.0 billion ($2.5 billion) for the first quarter of 2016, an increase of 268% year-over-year

Baidu Wallet activated accounts reached 65 million at the end of March 2016, an increase of 152% year-over-year

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Some accuse the Chinese government of blocking the use of Google. The People’s Republic has stopped the use of Google and Gmail in some instances. This happened most recently in late 2014. China’s censors have shown concern that Google’ search results are too “open,” which leaves the population the chance to search for topics the government appears to prefer they do not see.

Google probably never will get a share of the Chinese market, which leaves its global growth hampered, at least a little.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.