Group Discussion Group 10

 Baidu

Group Members:

Liu Zhilin

Chen Chenyu

Wang Ziling

Luo Yingxue

Qian Zirui

Huang Yufei

Changes:

Over the past decade, Baidu has experienced significant changes, encompassing both strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

1. Successful AI Transition: Through its “ALL in AI” strategy, Baidu successfully shifted focus to becoming an AI-driven company, excelling in areas like autonomous driving, voice recognition, and natural language processing.

2. Technical Breakthroughs with Apollo and PaddlePaddle: Baidu’s Apollo program has taken a leading role in the autonomous driving sector, while PaddlePaddle, China’s first self-developed deep learning platform, has made significant contributions to AI advancement.

3. Expansion into Smart Ecosystems and Hardware: Baidu expanded into the Internet of Things (IoT) market with products like the Xiaodu smart speakers, leveraging its AI technology to drive growth in the smart living space.

Weaknesses:

1. User Migration: With the rise of platforms like ByteDance, and Xiaohongshu, users increasingly shifted to other search engines and content platforms, leading to a shrinking user base for Baidu.

2. Decreased Database Availability: The quality of search results declined, with reduced database information and a noticeable increase in advertisements, negatively impacting user experience.

3. Declining Market Capitalization: Baidu’s market value fell, transforming it from a once-dominant tech giant into a company with diminished influence. 

The 3Cs Model:

Business Model:

Baidu’s business model is a comprehensive and dynamic framework that revolves primarily around its core offerings of search engines, online advertising, content distribution,    mobile search, and app distribution. It further extends into the realms of Baidu Cloud, offering cloud-based solutions, and encompasses a myriad of supplementary services, including shopping and travel search, online payments, and map service. Moreover, Baidu remains at the forefront of technological advancements, continually pushing the boundaries by venturing into emerging fields like artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Competitors:

The key competitors of Baidu can be divided into different fields. Firstly, as a search engine, the key competitors include Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Sogou, Weibo, and some other similar search engines. These search engines are built for users to find useful information and knowledge. However, when considering Baidu's resource storage system (Baidu Wangpan), the competitors would be Kuake, Xunlei, and so on. The main function of these Apps is sharing and storing digital resources. And finally, in the field of map systems (Baidu Map), the key competitors of Baidu are Gaode, Apple Map, and so on.

Clients:

Individual users: users can get relevant information by using its search engines, including web pages, videos, images, and other services. AI has also been used to optimize recommendation results, improve the accuracy of the results, and provide users with a summary overview of results.

Advertisers: BAIDU offers online marketing services to a diverse range of advertisers from various industries. It allows advertisers to have their ads shown on the search results pages, and the more advertisers pay for their ads, the higher their ads will be placed on the search results page. 

Content providers: content providers are those who contribute their copyrighted content to BAIDU products.