Baidu aims to be 2nd most popular search engine in Japan

Monday 08th September, 07:28 AM JST

TOKYO —

Baidu.com Inc’s Japanese arm is aiming to be the second choice of Internet search engines in Japan, its president, Toshikazu Inoue, said. Baidu Inc. will focus on making its services best suited for Japanese users, Inoue said.

U.S. engines such as Google Inc do not necessarily offer search results that Japanese users want most, he said.

Inoue was an executive in charge of search business at Yahoo Japan Corp until he took the helm of the unit of China’s top search engine in early August.

Inoue said that behind his decision for the shift was his belief that Baidu has the potential to be the top Asian search engine.

Inoue said the China-led Asian region will lead the global Internet industry in the future.

JCN

12 Comments

some14some at 07:46 AM JST - 8th September

Japan is a small market, will work as good as locomotive engine. "Bye, we do without baidu" will be the reaction of j-market.
noborito at 08:51 AM JST - 8th September

Striving to be #2. Quite a sad headline. Set yourself up for a fall at best, right from the start. What a great business model.
KyouNoNippon at 08:56 AM JST - 8th September

Second place is first loser. No Fear.
mojibake at 09:12 AM JST - 8th September

goodluckwiththat.
sageb1 at 11:01 AM JST - 8th September

2 is better than yahoo!
gogogo at 11:37 AM JST - 8th September

Yahoo is the number 1 search engine in Japan not google, people assume google runs the world, these guys really need to get their facts correct.
thepro at 12:43 PM JST - 8th September

The article doesn't say google is number 1...
PASHA_51 at 01:33 PM JST - 8th September

Looks like Baidu will become No.1 in Japanese market but it all depends on her performance .
Altria at 01:35 PM JST - 8th September

I don't think it's gonna take off here, the name sounds too much like syphilis.
randomenigma at 01:43 PM JST - 8th September

I suppose one reason Google might not work effectively is that so many Japanese sites block connections from outside Japan.
Cos at 04:18 PM JST - 8th September

@Randonenigma "so many Japanese sites block connections from outside Japan."

Do they ? What about Baidu ? Didn't they become famous in helping the Chinese government in shutting China's internet to the rest of the unfiltered world ?
rjdsr at 04:44 AM JST - 9th September

Cos, don't put spaces before question marks.

Baidu will fail here - their marketing is awful. Their search results are terrible.