Quote from Slim Harpo:
China Search Engine Baidu.com Set for IPO
Sunday July 31, 11:25 pm ET
By Joe Mcdonald, Associated Press Writer
Baidu.com, the Chinese Version of Google, Prepares for U.S. Stock Market Debut
Little known abroad, 5-year-old Baidu.com says it already is the world's sixth most-visited Internet site, thanks to a strong following from China's 100 million-plus Web surfers.
[And the gov't knows the IP address and ISP accounts of each and every one of them.]
Baidu.com is in the front ranks of an emerging group of Chinese companies that are trying to create Internet services uniquely suited to their country's ideogram-based language and the political restrictions of its communist government
Google bought 2.6 percent of Baidu.com last year in a move that outsiders thought might lead to the American giant taking over the tiny Chinese startup. But Baidu.com has stayed independent.
[Translation: Google has no problem with oppression as long as it makes money. In 1930's, Google would have been out there trying to do business with Hitler.]
The company says it already makes money -- some $303,000 in the three months that ended on March 31.
[That's $100,000 a month. There may actually be ET members who make more.]
So a search engine must sift through twice as many characters. And Chinese is written without spaces between words, making it hard for a machine to figure out where one ends and the next begins.
[Also the Chinese language still contains troubling words like freedom and democracy which must be sifted out. But I'm sure Nortel, Microsoft and Google will come up with a project to take care of that.]
