Ya, for the big one, Baidu is the ultimate search engine for porn and health care scams, where they used to derive most of their revenue. Compared to Chinese Bing which is pretty clean with pretty effective porn filters (but also makes almost no money).
Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near that.
All the western companies pay income tax on private health insurance benefits, while all the Chinese companies don't, because the law is unclear.
> Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near that.
Huh. Sounds like a certain transportation company...
I'm familiar with users searching for porn but not health care scams.
Are you saying that Baidu was directing traffic to health care scams willingly?
Interesting remark on AliPay & WePay. I wonder what kind of agreements Chinese gov made with those companies after the fact.
Here's as good as any point to remember that a warrant canary disappeared from Apple's privacy text about a year ago. Before it was about "we will protect user's privacy".. then there was a big "privacy" announcement that had text about following the law etc. IMHO gov got to them and it's understandable - companies exist in frameworks set by governments. It's in Apple's best interest to comply with them. To suggest otherwise is a political stance, not an economic one.
Ya, Baidu got caught last year and got a slap on the wrist. Oddly enough, they were in it with a military hospital for that case, which should raise a lot of other eye brows.
China doesn't have rule of law, so everything is illegal but nothing is, if you can navigate that contradiction, then you just have to make sure your context isn't bad enough to be cracked down on. The same was true with Didi and anti-black cab laws (but Uber operates in the gray margins of those laws all the time, so there was no point in mentioning that).
China doesn't really care about your idealism. If you go against the government's interests, they will beat you down. This is one thing the Chinese companies get really well and allow them to play fast and lose with the law as long as they adhere to that one principal.
how about stop selling your single sided story? Baidu's involvement in those healthcare scams got its reputation totally trashed, which in turn failed numerous Baidu products. As a direct consequence, Baidu is now considered a tier-2 Internet company with almost weekly news reports talking about company XYZ is replacing Baidu.
it is also highly laughable for your private health insurance joke. there is _no_ Chinese law requiring any company to provide _private_ health insurance to anyone. Public healthcare levy is required by the law, that is all.
Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near that.
All the western companies pay income tax on private health insurance benefits, while all the Chinese companies don't, because the law is unclear.