An Internet search engine orientation

Robin Li, also known as Li Yanhong is a Chinese citizen born on 17 November 1968 (Lee, 2016). Yangquan, Shanxi province in China was where Li was born and where he was brought up. His parents were both factory workers. Li was the only boy in his family with four sisters. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree after he completed his course on information management at Peking University where he was enrolled. He, later on, went to learn for a bachelor in computer science at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, United States, at the end of 1991. He decided not to resume with PhD after he got his Master of Science in Computer Science degree.

He is now a successful Chinese Internet Entrepreneur and the co-founder of Baidu, a Chinese search engine. In September 2015, Li was ranked the seventh richest man in China and 119th in the world with an estimated net worth of US$9.6 billion.

Robin Li accomplishment (The rise of Baidu)

During the summer of 1998, a biochemist, Eric Xu, 34, introduced his colleague Robin Li to the leader of Yahoo’s engine for search, John Wu. By then, Mr. Li was a frustrated worker at Infoseek as a staff engineer (Barboza, 2007). The company was an Internet search engine oriented, which was partially possessed by Disney, a firm whose devotion was fading to Infoseek didn’t blend in with Mr. Robin’s search frenzy. Robin was devoted to sticking with search even though his colleagues didn’t believe the search was all that relevant.

As a matter of fact, a year later, Li started his own search company, which he named Baidu. Baidu enjoys a market worth of $3 billion today, and it works on the website which is the fourth-most trafficked around the globe. And today, the firm has managed to do what no alternative Internet organization has managed to accomplish; outsmarting Yahoo and Google in its domestic market. With the help of a website which the Chinese government censors heavily and grants it the first concern to advertising in preference of search results, Baidu keeps the ball rolling to earn shares in the Chinese market.

Although Baidu’s evolvement, and Robin’s adventure as a businessman, grants examples of textbooks of the perils and payoffs of carrying out business in China and propose that Baidu may certify to be more flexible than a few analysts think. An estimated 130 million people of the China’s population of 130 billion are Internet users, a vir6ual market, which is second in breadth to the market of America. China is considered to be the next battleground of the internet by analysts because is number one fastest growing major economy in the world, with Baidu adversely situated to succeed in that competition.

The firm has secured its supremacy with the government of Chinese’s support in return for allowing censors to oversee its website. The government of China frequently blocks Google in China and dictate very tough rules and censorship to other external companies of the internet. China entrepreneurs have the tendency to pummel internet giants from America as suggested by the analyst. Mr. Brueschke, an analyst from the Citigroup, of the Chinese market, believes Baidu will detain position in the search industry of China. He says, “Who is going to be number two, and not who is going to be number one in the battle of the competitive landscape”.

Of course, Google won’t agree with this, insisting on its search results independence and the reach of its customers internationally. However, Mr. Robin says his firm model is working extraordinarily well, and the organization has gained the loyalty of its customers who value its capabilities in searching.

During the start of this company, Mr. Li and his partner Eric Xu, raised $1.2 million from two venture capital firms in Silicon Valley purposely to invest in this business. Two firms of venture capital, IDH Technology and Draper Fisher Jurvetson pumped in another $10 million nine months later. Offering services of searching to other portals of China is what the firm started with before it developed its search engine that stood alone.

Baidu started its own website, Baidu.com, which was just similar to the no-frills homepage of Google in September 2001. Baidu granted advertisers the bid for ad space, before even Google did it, and paid the firm each time a client clicked an ad. The company achieved a profit in 2004 as the company was engulfed in traffic due to the small and medium-sized businesses who loved it. On August 2005, Baidu went public with at a share of $27. The shares of the company closed at $122 when the trade end that day, up 354%, since the peak of dot-com in 2000, this was the biggest opening on Nasdaq. Unexpectedly, Baidu became a $4 billion firm with Mr. Robin having stock valued over $900 million. In the first half of this year, Baidu’s income jumped 190% to $40.9 million, with 550% soared gain to $11.7 million. The company’s website is attracting millions of teenagers with the quest to download files of music, blogs creation or “China’s ten most gorgeous women” pictures. Although Baidu is evolving fast, when compared to Google’s, its revenue is still weak.

According to analysts, the firm is dealing with a different audience when compared to Western internet organizations since the people of China are more obsessed with entertainment rather than books, car rental rates or news. 70% of internet users in China are below the age of 30 and are looking for entertainment. According to a research company from Beijing, no other internet firm in China is growing at the pace of Baidu, which had over 50% pay-per-click market during its first six months from a 37% share in similar duration.

Robin Li effects on people and organization

Robin Li has vast domestic admirers (The Guardian, 2007). The multi-millionaire is an internet entrepreneur model who has managed to outsmart some of the most powerful multinationals around the globe. However, his detractors blame him for being a navigator-in-chief of the fleet for online music pirates especially in the industry of global entertainment. But Robin asserts that he does not have time for criticism and plaudits. He is busy keeping ahead of the fast changes in the internet of China, and focused on building an empire which he predicts will set a challenge to Microsoft of Bill Gates one day.