Google Continues Its Slide In China
According to the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), Google’s not doing so well. A number of users are jumping ship, and going straight to Baidu, Google’s biggest Chinese competitor.
“China’s official Internet number cruncher,” wrote Steven Schwankert of the IDG News Service, found that “62.1 percent of Chinese users turned to local favorite Baidu for search, up from about 52 percent in 2005 . . . . Baidu also had the highest brand recognition among search engines, with 86.5 percent of respondents identifying with the name, compared to only 64 percent for Google.”
Schwankert hinted that CNNIC might not be an entirely impartial observer – that wouldn’t come as a great surprise, given the Chinese government’s well-known tendency towards censorship. “Although its surveys are considered representative of Chinese Internet use, CNNIC rarely releases its methodology or sample size,” Schwankert stated.
“However, for this survey,” he continued, “CNNIC said that it interviewed 4,500 total Chinese Internet users, 1,500 each in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and that the poll had a 5 percent margin of error.”
As for other numbers pertaining to Google, the company “saw its market share drop from 33 percent last year to 25.3 percent in the current survey. While a majority of users identified with the brand, 31.9 percent recognized Google’s Chinese name, ‘Gu Ge,’ or ‘Harvest Song,’ in Chinese, compared to 16.3 percent for its English name.”
It wasn’t all bad news for the American search engine company, however: “it was the first choice for more non-student users with an income of greater than 3,000 renminbi (US$378) than its rivals, with 46.5 percent.”
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