Are CCTV’s Attacks on Baidu a Scheme to Boost China’s State-Run Search Engines?

The prolonged investigations by state-run television, CCTV, into China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, look suspicious to some observers in the tech industry. Privately, some fear that the reporting is actually aimed at bolstering several state-backed search engines, such as Jike, Panguso, and – well, look at this – CCTV’s own brand-new search engine, at search.cctv.com. Conflict of interest there, perhaps?

The government has full control over the way content is listed on those three search engines. Although Baidu – and all other media companies operating in China – abide by local laws, and do not show prohibited content – be it ‘adult’ or politically critical – it’s notable that Beijing authorities don’t have as much direct influence on the web as they do in print or TV. And that’s perhaps where CCTV’s effort, Jike, and Panguso come in.

CCTV Search (pictured above) launched very sneakily in recent weeks, and went unnoticed by most people. The other two were a lot more high profile when they went online. Panguso is a collaboration between China Mobile (state-owned) and the official government news agency Xinhua, which launched in February of this year. Jike is run by the government’s People’s Daily newspaper; when it launched in June, a handful of China’s web lumiaries were on hand to help, including Sina’s CEO Charles Chao, and Baidu’s chief scientist William Zhang. Yes, that’s the way things work here – if the government orders you to piss in your own milkshake, that’s what you do.

CCTV Search, Panguso, and Jike all have a microscopic share of China’s search engine market – so tiny that none of them have ever registered in any measurements. Last time we looked, just last month, Baidu had rocketed to a user share of 76 percent, while Google had dropped to 19. The smallest cataloged market shares in China belonged to Tencent’s Soso.com search engine, with 0.85 percent, and Netease’s Youdao.com with 0.31.

Divide and Rule?

Jike.com might be censorious, but it's more relaxed about showing a bit of flesh. (Click to enlarge).

CCTV’s primetime attacks on Baidu started out with an exposé on alleged irregularities in its promoted search results, which CCTV claim can be easily manipulated by fraudulent sites. And while that has some consumerist value, the attacks continued for much of the week, and spread to critiques of Baidu’s very popular social discussion portal, Tieba, which is the closest thing Baidu has to a social media success. Baidu’s stock (NASDAQ:BIDU) opened down on Tuesday and again yesterday.

CCTV has even launched a minisite for its Baidu reports which has a huge banner reading “Baidu’s Dodgy Promoted Search Results” and is encouraging people to use that phrase as a hashtag on CCTV’s own microblogging service at t.cntv.cn.

On a similar note, we reported yesterday on state-run newspaper People’s Daily slamming the dating site Jiayuan for apparently enabling casual sex among its users.

This is where some people in the industry fear that the Baidu coverage has crossed from being consumer-oriented reportage to the realms of a politically-motivated attempt at new regulation in the search engine market.

Baidu has maintained its silence all week, with no official comment.

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.