Scott Hommel
7/16/2013
CMSY-129-N091
Portfolio
Assignment 3
Information
Literacy and Searching the Web
We are used to Google having the
predominant market share of the highly profitable search engine industry here
in the United States. However, Baidu is the top dog in China controlling over
60% off its search engine market. Google Hong Kong just simply can't compete
with China's Baidu, which is basically everything Google is and possibly more,
only adapted for the Chinese by the
Chinese. Due to Google's inability to keep up with Baidu, the President of
Greater China Google has stepped down.
While Baidu maintains the
lion's share of the market, Google's slice of the search engine pie has
continued to vanish while upstarts such as Qihoo 360 continue to climb the
rungs. Some critics blame Google's decision to move their servers from the
mainland to Hong Kong where afterwards their "prospects dimmed considerably."
Google's Android operating system is apparently failing in China as well, with
opponents also pushing Google out of China's smartphone sector and as the head
of Asia telecom and internet research at CLSA puts it; "Google's biggest
challenge remains how to penetrate China."
Call me socialist if you
will, but I couldn't help feeling pleased to read that there is a ceiling too high
for multi-billion dollar industries to reach.
According to our textbook "Google has become one of the world's most
profitable companies, with more than $36 billion in annual revenue." I
envy the innovators and venture capitalists who have made a fortune off of
riding the waves of silicon valley to a sea of fortune. However, it's nice to
see that other parts of the world are able to resist such a powerful entity. No
doubt it has something to do with U.S./Chinese foreign relations as I'm sure
China would frown upon letting the U.S. win the search engine war on their
home-turf, but it's refreshing to hear of a country defying an industry giant
like Google. Now if only the Baidus and Googles of the world could unite,
putting differences aside to share their technologies for the betterment of
mankind, then we might really start getting somewhere in our search.
Works Cited
Baldauf, Ken. "4.4.1 Search Engine." Emerge
with Computer Concepts. Vol.
4.0. Boston: Course Technology, 2013. CON 151. Print.
Carsten, Paul. "Google's Greater China
President Steps down." MercuryNews.com.
MediaNews Group, 15 July 2013. Web. 16 July 2013.
<http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23662221/googles-greater-china-president-steps-down>.
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