Baidu, China’s largest internet search engine, looks set to face a wave of legal challenges as a group of lawyers is organising a mass complaint against the company’s business practices.
Led by Li Changqing, who filed the first complaint under China’s new anti-monopoly law against Baidu in October, the group said it had enlisted more than 50 companies that were willing to sue Baidu, and the mass complaint would be filed once the number had risen to 100. Which, it now appears, has already happened.
The plan aims to test Baidu’s willingness to adjust its business model in response to what critics have billed as a crisis of confidence in the Nasdaq-listed Chinese company.
Baidu holds 70% of the Chinese internet search market, far ahead of Google, whose market share is estimated at 26%. Baidu derives its revenues from auctioning search keywords and includes search results generated through this practice in the overall result list rather than separating them clearly.
The lawyers’ initiative follows a barrage of criticism after state television in November attacked the Baidu business model and accused the company of giving top listings to unlicensed medical websites and blocking websites that refused to pay for listings.
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Source: Financial Times