How to Steal Google's Millions of Users

I must warn you from the beginning that this piece of news is not yet confirmed so please take it as a rumor. Duncan Riley from TechCrunch sustains that one of his Chinese contacts notified him about a strange situation in the country which might explain Baidu's dominance over the super giant Google. As you surely know, Google is the best search engine on the web and tried to expand its offering into China in order to reach new customers. But the Asian market seems to be prohibited for Google as most users were attracted by Baidu, a Google-like company that offers almost the same technologies as the Mountain View firm. Because of that, Google struggled to improve its Chinese services but it was simply impossible to compete with Baidu.

Now listen to this. It appears that Baidu and the Chinese ISPs are redirecting the users who try to access Google's Blog Search engine to the main page of Baidu, forcing them to search using the local search technology and not the one powered by the Mountain View company. Obviously, this wouldn't be a fair technique (please note this is only a rumor since it wasn't confirmed by any of the sides) because it would steal millions of users who are looking to search the Internet using Google.

One of the TechCrunch readers reveals another unfair technique which redirected users to Baidu but it's just another unconfirmed piece of news. It seems like some spyware files installed on Chinese users' computers redirected all their searches, no matter where they entered them, to Baidu's search technologies. Obviously, all the malicious files could be easily removed with an anti-spyware solution but it's way too unfair to attract consumers in this way.

If there's any Chinese user who can confirm or deny this rumor, please let us know.