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Baidu
百度
Searching for the next big thing
搜索下一個風口
China’s biggest search engine turns to personal transport to drive profits
中國最大搜索引擎轉向個人出行領域謀利
Robin Li smiled when asked at a corporate shindig in 2014 to reflect on his path to becoming, at the time, China’s richest man. “I’m just lucky,” he insisted. Mr Li, co-founder and boss of Baidu, a Beijing-based search engine, may have been trying to project modesty. But his words could also have been taken literally. Thanks to government censorship, Google is inaccessible in mainland China. That leaves Baidu as the unrivalled leader in Chinese search. Slowing advertising revenues, however, are now taking it down a different road.
在2014年的一次企業研討會上，被問及如何成為當時的中國首富的李彥宏微微一笑。他堅稱，“只是僥幸。”李彥宏是搜索引擎百度（總部位于北京）的聯合創始人兼老板，他可能一直在試圖展現自己謙遜的一面。但他的話也可以照字面理解。由于政府審查，中國內地無法訪問谷歌。這使得百度在中國搜索領域難逢敵手。然而，廣告收入增長的放緩使百度選擇另辟蹊徑。
Baidu’s search dominance is indisputable. Its average of 538m monthly active users last year was nearly six times the combined total of the next three domestic rivals. Baidu’s share price has tripled in a year, taking its market capitalisation to $93bn. Riding this wave of investor enthusiasm, it has filed for a secondary listing in Hong Kong, with trading set to begin on March 23rd. The firm is expected to raise around $4bn. But the steep rise in Baidu’s valuation might seem unwarranted. Advertising, the main source of revenue, has suffered as the pandemic forced Chinese businesses to cut marketing budgets. Adverts on Baidu’s main search service brought in 66.3bn yuan ($9.6bn) in 2020, 5% less than the year before.
百度在搜索領域的主導地位毋庸置疑。該公司去年平均每月活躍用戶量為5.38億，是緊隨其后的三家國內競爭對手用戶量總和的近6倍。百度的股價在一年內翻了三番，市值達到930億美元。在投資者熱情的推動下，百度已申請在香港二次上市，交易定于3月23日開始。預計該公司將融資約40億美元。但百度估值的急劇上升似乎是毫無理由的。由于新冠疫情迫使中國企業削減營銷預算，作為主要收入來源的廣告受到影響。2020年，百度主要搜索服務的廣告收入為663億元人民幣（合96億美元），比上年減少了5%。
Even as China’s economy recovers advertising is unlikely to propel Baidu’s growth as powerfully as before. In recent years the supply of digital ad space in China has multiplied, depressing prices. Businesses can now choose from an array of platforms on which to hawk their wares—from addictive video apps like Kuaishou to e-commerce upstarts like Pinduoduo.
即使在中國經濟復蘇之際，廣告也不太可能像以前那樣有力地推動百度的利潤增長。近年來，中國數字廣告空間的供應量成倍增加，導致廣告價格不斷壓低。想要兜售自己產品的企業現在有一系列平臺可供選擇，從快手等令人上癮的視頻應用，到拼多多等電子商務新貴。
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