WEB MARKET

Baidu Goes from Search to Commerce

Baidu.com, Inc., a leading Chinese language Internet search provider, has launched the beta version of its online C2C platform, called "Baidu Youa." It is an online shopping system through which merchants can sell their products and services at Baidu-registered stores. 

The customers, says Baidu, driven to these stores primarily through Baidu's search engine, will be able to use a Baidu-branded online payment system, BaiFuBao, to make purchases. BaiFuBao was created in-house by Baidu's research and development team and is ready to be utilized on the C2C platform. 

"Baidu Youa continues Baidu's tradition of providing the best possible online experience for our users," said Jun Yu, Baidu's vice president of products. "This new C2C platform provides user-friendly shopping with emphasis on customer service." 

It further says that in the invitation-only preliminary testing stage, 10,000 sellers were selected from over 100,000 applications to become the first merchants of Baidu Youa.  

Meanwhile, 50,000 users from Baidu's online community platforms were selected to be Baidu Youa's first customers. 

In the short test period, merchants uploaded more than 1 million items for sale, the company informs. 

The move to launch Youa is part of Baidu’s expansion plans. Of late, it has entered into agreements with UiTV, a leading operator of Internet television platform in China. Under these agreements, Baidu will contribute assets related to the operation of Baidu Internet TV Channel to UiTV in exchange for an 8.3% stake in UiTV and US$15 million.

The name "Baidu" was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. And Baidu’s literal meaning is hundreds of times. So the search engine believes in persistent search for the ideal.