Baidu.com gets ready for IPO

[Shak]

David Liu, managing director of technology investment banking with Broadview, a division of Jefferies & Co., said Chinese companies are often reluctant to accept a buyout before they determine their growth prospects.

"If Baidu gets a crazy number from Google, they'll have to consider it," said Liu, cautioning that he has no specific knowledge that Google is weighing a move on Baidu. "But one of the challenges with Chinese companies is that they're growing so rapidly it's a difficult decision to make. For the Chinese clients I've worked with, M&A has been a secondary option because growth prospects are so high and the best is yet to come."

[biz.yahoo.com...]

[bill]

I wonder how the market will take to this IPO. Baidu has been walking all over Google in the mainland market in terms of market-share / mind-share. If the IPO does go through Google will have to pay a pretty penny to get their hands on this property.

[hotice_2002]

Strongly suggest Google NOT to buy Baidu.

If Google pay more money to China government, and the communication department won't BLOCK Google's site, then Google will win more customers from China, and defeat Baidu easily.

Google must put a server in China. We often couldn't open Google's webpage in China. That is vital problem. In China, Google is losing lots of visitors due to network connection.

[bill]

Why shouldn't Google buy Baidu? If the market breakdowns are accurate then they would end up with a solid half of the market.

[newsphinx]

Hi, Bill. Much of Baidu's traffic comes from its music search unit, which Google does not have. I also believe Google may not want to launch such a service in the future because of piracy. Considering only web search traffic, I guess Google is not in disadvantage. Baidu is a short-sighted company which does not care about their search quality. What they care is $$$! They are going to LookSmart way. Google may buy it out and replace Baidu's search result with their own, thus take the market fast, or they start an agressive campaign to convert more searchers to it slowly. But Baidu is dying for sure.

[shri]

>> Baidu is a short-sighted company which does not care about their search quality.

Signs of the dot bomb happening all over again, with typical asian speed.

If Li Ka Shing invests in Baidu .. you know we're headed towards a bubble. (Someone remind me how much money Cheong Kong / Hutchison / Tom.Com / PCCW are sitting on.)

[wolf07]

agree. the whole dotcom business has never been a solid model in China although we have everything copied from the west. one thing that is still left behind is about the art of the process. when you look at the seach engine in china, you know it takes time to understand the key of "relevancy," when you look at the web design in China, you know it takes time to move into "usability." even some permission-based marketing practices like email and the newsletter things, takes time too.

[bill]

Can Baidu's lead in the market simply be attributed to Google's inhibited access to this market? If Google weren't firewalled as much as it is now do you think that they have a better product than Baidu? I've heard many of you complain that Google's Chinese language SERPs were junk. Isn't Baidu doing a better job on that end, or have things changed?

[shri]

>> If Google weren't firewalled as much as it is now do you think that they have a better product than Baidu?

Doubt it.

Google does have a better product overall, they're just not focused enough on the chinese aspect of it.

I think everyone in this thread is well aware of the fact that you do not need a better product to make things work in China. It is all a fine mix of politics, corruption (not just monetary.. gugagxi introduces corruption into systems) and being at the right place at the right time.

For now, Baidu has the magic mix and Google is a part of that magic.

[netvisa]

FYI, on a weekly average basis, Baidu has surpassed Sina to become the No. 1 Chinese web site both in reach and traffic rank according to Alexa.
[alexa.com...]

[jpenguin]

Baidu was reported to inform the Chinese government of people searching politically banned terms at Google and using Google cache as a way to bypass the China Great Fireall. Due to this kind of underhanded tactics, Google was blocked for months in China in 2004 and is still unstable in China to this day.

[guoqi]

>>>If Google pay more money to China government, and the communication department won't BLOCK Google's site, then Google will win more customers from China, and defeat Baidu easily.

>>>I think everyone in this thread is well aware of the fact that you do not need a better product to make things work in China. It is all a fine mix of politics, corruption (not just monetary.. gugagxi introduces corruption into systems) and being at the right place at the right time.

I think I am not very agree these kind of sentences here. In every country, especially on search engine market, you surely needs to have a good product to gain the market. I often use both baidu & google for the same search terms, because they will give me different results. It seems to me that Google might return a better search result at this momentIChinese is a special language which requires special technique for it, those PHDs on google had no idea about Chinese before. Google improved a lot on their Chinese search engine in past half an year.

[kwngian]

Google would see the advantage of buying a company that borders their activities on spyware. Like they do not already have enough spyware scums amongst their search partners.

[bill]

Here is a bit more speculation about the Google & Baidu situation:

article [english.people.com.cn]
There are two options for Google, said Schmidt. One is that Google holds shares of Baidu and the other is that both sides deepen cooperation, and Google would hold more Baidu's stakes or even set up a joint venture. This may lead to Google's takeover of Baidu, turning Baidu into its subsidiary in China.

[bill]

It looks like the SEC accepted Baidu's IPO prospectus [sec.gov].

The entire filing is huge, and I haven't read it all, but I did notice that Baidu's CEO, Mr. Li, "worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer in the Internet search engine industry, from July 1997 to December 1999." I'll have to keep looking to see if there are any other good tidbits in there.

[Shak]

[ruggedelegantliving.com...]

a great article on the Baidu IPO

Shak

[lela]

That will be a great success for chinese search industry whether baidu IPO get failing or successful.
Its the first pure-search player in China crash into USA securities market.

It will pave the road for the later possible ones, leave them some experiences or valuable lessons to help them go public more smoothly and maturely.

I admire Baidu very much for their courage and insight. There may be a benign circle after the IPO.
As the prospectus said, the 8 mln will be used for new products development and network capacity expand.

I really hope Baidu will have a great successful IPO.

[DotBombed]

I really hope that Baidu is successful, and turns out to be as good as Google, for China. But I really hope Baidu is aware of what they are getting into by going public, and will be able to maintain their standing.

[Shak]

BEIJING -- Baidu.com takes its name from a 900-year-old poem but its ambitions are ultramodern _ to become the Chinese-language equivalent of Internet search giant Google Inc. 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.

Now the startup founded by two Chinese veterans of American tech firms is preparing to follow Google's example with an initial public offering in the United States, hoping to raise $45 million. A date for the offering has not been announced.

[washingtonpost.com...]

word has it that the 1st week of August sees the IPO take place.

Shak

[edited by: Woz at 10:11 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] Tidying up. [/edit]

[bill]

I hope this doesn't put too much of a damper on things...

Baidu sued over alleged copyright infringement [chinapost.com.tw]

Baidu.com Inc., China's biggest Internet search engine and part-owned by Google Inc., is being sued by two local companies over alleged copyright infringement, ahead of its planned first-time share sale in the U.S.

"The copyright issue has cast great uncertainty over Baidu's future business models and revenue," said Gu Feng, a technology analyst at Shenyin Wanguo Securities Co. in Shanghai. "This is something investors should take into account."

[tcpn8]

A couple thoughts.....I think any realistic chances of google acquiring baidu in the near future are very very small considering the amount of governemt agencies in china that might have to approve a deal like this. Definitely not something that a company who just opened a rep office in china is in any position to do.

Personally I have my doubts about baidu in the long run, they do have a large market share at the moment but that has a lot to do with google not being very good for searching for things like music and news in Chinese (at least in comparison to baidu). But over time google (as well as yahoo) will find their footing in the chinese market and will fine tune their products to the chinese market. At which point I think they will have the reources to give baidu a very serious run for their money.

[tcpn8]

also as far as the lawsuit goes I'm sure that it isn't a big deal just somebody hoping to get a little hush money....I'm sure they planned the timing of the lawsuit and have very little chances of actually winning regardless of the facts due to baidu's size and resources which we all know count for a lot in China......

[bill]

I don't think winning a copyright infringement lawsuit was the point. They're drawing attention to Baidu's Achilles heel, music piracy. Just bringing this suit has done the damage. It's going to make some Wall Street people a bit more wary. This certainly won't stop any IPO plans, but it may cause some people to think twice before investing.