Baidu's China headquarters will be moved to Shanghai.
Shanghai's increasingly superior development environment is attracting more IT companies to settle in. Reporters learned from insiders yesterday that Baidu, the largest Internet search engine in China, plans to move its headquarters to Shanghai this year in order to improve its layout in the search field.
Regarding the news of moving to Shanghai, Baidu's public relations manager said that it is not convenient to comment on this matter at present. However, according to informed sources, Liang Dong, vice president of Baidu, and relevant market participants have already discussed some possible cooperation in Shanghai.
Some analysts believe that the Shanghai government will pay more attention to the growth of high-tech enterprises in the future, especially in the reserve of technical and commercial talents; Shanghai is a city famous for its services, and Baidu will do more services in the future. Therefore, it is logical for Baidu to move its headquarters to Shanghai.
It is reported that Baidu is currently preparing to open a laboratory tentatively named "User Experience Center" in the near future. As for where the research center will be located, Baidu has not given a clear answer.
We can see that with the promotion of search services by Google and Yahoo in China, the development of Baidu has begun to accelerate to meet the challenge.
According to reports, Baidu plans to conduct an IPO (initial public offering) on Nasdaq or NYSE this year, which may raise more than 200 million US dollars. The IPO plan may be carried out in the second half of this year.
Not only did the pace of listing accelerate, but after Internet giants such as Google, AskJeeves, Microsoft and Yahoo successively announced the launch of their own hard disk search tools, on March 7 this year, Baidu's hard disk search was officially put into use.
According to industry insiders, there are indications that Baidu is trying to improve its layout in the search field before listing.
At present, Baidu occupies 50% of the online search market in China, and made a profit in 2003. At the same time, its income increased by 65,438+0.50% from 2002 to 2003. At present, the text search volume of its search engine reaches 30 million times a day. According to the statistics of research firm iResearch, Baidu's revenue in 2003 was RMB 654.38 billion, of which 80% came from paid links.