Baidu Europe hopes to extort big bucks out of popular search engine.
Remember Baidu? Not the Chinese search giant, but the European software company that has promoted its trademarks and baidu.tld domain names for sale? Well, it’s putting its brand and domain names up for sale. And it’s not hiding the fact that it hopes the big search engine buys them.
In a brash press release about the sale on eBay, the company specifically cites Baidu the search company:
In 2008, Baidu Europe (baidu.eu) announced that it had the intention of selling its brand name and domain names due to the rapid growth of Baidu Inc (Nasdaq: BIDU), a very popular Chinese search engine. Baidu Inc. is now considered to be the world’s second largest search engine, the leading search engine in China. 76 percent of online searches in China are done at Baidu.com, compared to only 19.8 percent at Google, according to Search Engine Land. There is a fierce competition between Baidu.com and Google for worldwide search engine domination that is only expected to get more heated.
As if that’s not enough, the press release is clear about the threat to Baidu Inc. It says it has already talked to several interested parties, including “an American adult porn search engine”. The message is clear: Baidu Inc. needs to buy the trademarks and domains or risk having Baidu.eu and several other country code domains land on a porn site.
stu says
I call it blackmail !