Baidu, China's leading search engine for websites, audio files and images boasts a market share of 60% in that country, a position of dominance equivalent to that enjoyed by Google on the global scale. It provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images and 10 million multimedia files. It was also the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.
In November 2008 CCTV , the mainland's largest TV network ran an expose revealing that Baidu used fraudulent high-cost-per-click advertisements as its search results, and that many smaller websites were blocked by Baidu as a result of not opting-in to Baidu's advertising programs.
Salespeople working for Baidu drop sites from search results to bully companies into buying sponsored links, say some in a survey. Former clients say their rankings fell precipitously after they stop buying search-related ads from Baidu.
Baidu, although it denies the accusations, says it has a team that goes through searches and removes banned topics and sites suspected of using unfair tactics to elevate their rankings. And the company acknowledges that it mixes ads in with unpaid search results, rather than separating the two as Google does. At the end of every result, gray characters say "Promotion" for ads or "Baidu Snapshot" for unpaid entries. Research firm China IntelliConsulting says 90% of Chinese search users don't differentiate between the two.
CCTV showcased a patient getting fleeced by an unlicensed hospital he found on Baidu. The report highlighted Baidu's practice of mixing paid sponsored links from unlicensed hospitals and pharmaceutical companies with unpaid results. Baidu has since pulled all paid searches from unlicensed health-care companies, which the company said accounted for as much as 15% of revenue!
Sources from BusinessWeek.com , Wikipedia