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Chinese Search Engine Baidu Found to Have Provided Biased Search Results for Own Platforms [theepochtimes.com]
“Baidu.com is no longer a place where you search for Chinese online content. Rather, it is a search engine for Baidu’s own content,” Fang stated, adding that the search engine “does not guide you to Chinese content that can nourish your minds, but has become an aggregator of deteriorating content.”
Fang lamented that Baidu was using its search engine as a “marketing platform” for itself, turning “user searches into traffic for itself.”
Fang’s article has since been widely shared by Chinese media outlets and on social media, generating concerns over its self-promotion practices. On the same day that Fang published his article, shares of the Nasdaq-listed Baidu tumbled 6.4 percent, or by about $4 billion by value.
