Chinese search engine Baidu.com loses credibility

The Chinese search engine Baidu.com is far more successful in China than Google and has long been one of the country's flagship companies. Just over a year ago, the share price was at times 400 dollars, according to an article in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Thursday. For months now, however, the company has been sliding from one scandal to the next and the share has lost almost three quarters of its value. After the milk powder scandal, for example, it became known that Baidu had censored its search results on this topic. The population would have been able to accept this fact in itself, but not the fact that the milk powder companies had paid for the news blackout. This is unforgivable for the Chinese, according to the Tages-Anzeiger, and the credibility of the search engine has been destroyed as a result.
Further explosive details and rumors about Baidu later emerged. For example, crisis-ridden companies were able to manipulate the entries on the Baidu news portal for a fee of the equivalent of 770,000 francs. Last December, the state television station CCTV also revealed that Baidu was making money from illegal drug advertising. The search engine company has also had to justify itself in court for years for illegal music downloads.
The company has now appointed a new head of communications and hopes that users and shareholders will soon forget the past months of scandal.