Baidu
Chinese web services company
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| March 16 2025 | Baidu launched two new artificial intelligence models: ERNIE 4.5, a foundation model, and ERNIE X1, a reasoning model. The company claimed that ERNIE X1 performs comparably to DeepSeek's R1 model at half the price. |
| May 2024 | Following the workplace culture controversy, Baidu's stock price fell 2.17% in Hong Kong after the public incident and subsequent apology by the involved executive. |
| May 2024 | Baidu's former vice president and head of communications sparked a major controversy by endorsing a toxic workplace culture, including requesting a coworker to undertake a 50-day business trip during the COVID-19 pandemic. The incident led to widespread backlash on Chinese social media, discussion of Baidu's corporate governance, and the individual's apparent job loss. |
| 2023 | Baidu's Apollo Go autonomous ride-hailing service completed six million rides using driverless robotaxis across 11 cities, operating a fleet of over 400 driverless vehicles in Wuhan. |
| October 2023 | Baidu released a newer version of its chatbot, Ernie 4.0. |
| September 2023 | Baidu launches its generative AI chatbot, GenAI Ernie, marking the company's entry into the AI chatbot market. |
| August 2023 | Baidu publicly unveiled its ChatGPT-equivalent language model Ernie Bot. |
| November 2022 | Sustainalytics downgraded Baidu to 'non-compliant' with the United Nations Global Compact principles due to its involvement in censorship practices. |
| July 2022 | Baidu unveiled the Apollo RT6, a driverless vehicle planned to be added to their autonomous vehicle fleet in 2023. |
| June 2022 | Jidu Auto, an intelligent electric vehicle company backed by Baidu and Geely, unveiled its first concept ROBO-01 pre-production vehicle, which rides on Geely's Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) platform. |
| April 28 2022 | Baidu received permits from China to provide driverless taxis, launching autonomous ride-hailing services with 10 cars in a 23-square-mile suburban area. |
| August 2021 | Baidu revealed a new Robocar concept capable of Level 5 autonomous driving, featuring a second-generation AI chip that can analyze internal and external surroundings to provide predictive passenger suggestions. |
| March 2021 | Baidu secured a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising $3.1 billion, which was the largest homecoming for a U.S.-traded Chinese company in Hong Kong since JD.com's listing the previous June. |
| August 2020 | Baidu was banned and blocked in India as part of a broader action against Chinese websites following the 2020 China–India border skirmishes, citing national security concerns. |
| December 2019 | Baidu took the lead over Microsoft and Google in the General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) competition for AI natural language processing. |
| April 26 2019 | Google banned DO Global and over 100 of its apps from the Google Play Store and AdMob Network due to ad fraud, also suspending the account of related developer ES Global. |
| April 20 2019 | Reports surfaced about DO Global's fraudulent ad-clicking practices in its Android applications, revealing that multiple apps with hundreds of millions of downloads were generating illicit ad revenue. |
| 2018 | China's government designated Baidu as one of its 'AI champions'. Baidu also divested its 'Global DU business' portion of overseas business, which developed utility apps like ES File Explorer and DU Recorder. |
| 2018 | People's Daily criticized Baidu for reliability issues in search results, highlighting concerns about paid advertisements dominating search pages |
| October 2018 | Baidu becomes the first Chinese firm to join the United States-based computer ethics consortium Partnership on AI. |
| 2017 | Baidu began collaborating with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and 372 Internet police departments to detect and counter 'anti-government rumors' using advanced technologies like natural language processing, big data, and artificial intelligence. |
| October 16 2017 | Baidu announced its first annual Baidu World technology conference 'Bring AI to Life', which was live-streamed and held at China World Summit Wing and Kerry Hotel. |
| September 2017 | Baidu launched a $1.5 billion autonomous driving fund to invest in up to 100 autonomous driving projects over three years. They also rolled out a portable talking translator and co-led a joint investment of US$12 billion with Alibaba Group, Tencent, JD.com, and Didi Chuxing, acquiring 35% of China Unicom's stakes. |
| July 2017 | Baidu Global Business Unit entered into a partnership with Snap Inc. to become the official ad reseller for Snapchat in Greater China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. |
| June 2017 | Baidu partnered with Continental and Bosch, auto industry suppliers, to collaborate on automated driving and connected cars. |
| April 2017 | Baidu announced the launch of Apollo project (Apolong), a self-driving vehicle platform aimed at developing autonomous cars with vehicle, hardware, software platforms, and cloud data services. |
| 2016 | DO Global (formerly DU Group) began running covert revenue-enhancing background programs in its Android apps, clicking on internet ads without user knowledge. |
| May 2 2016 | The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) dispatched investigators to Baidu following the Wei Zexi incident, launching an official investigation into the company's medical advertising practices. |
| April 12 2016 | Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old college student with synovial sarcoma, died after receiving experimental cancer treatment found through a Baidu search, which led to massive online discussions about the platform's medical advertising practices. |
| January 12 2016 | Baidu officially announced the complete cessation of commercial cooperation for disease-related Tieba communities, limiting them to only authoritative public welfare organizations after controversy over selling a hemophilia online community to unqualified hospitals. |
| 2015 | Internet users in China reached 705 million by the end of the year. |
| March 16 2015 | Baidu closed its Japanese language search service. |
| February 2015 | Baidu was alleged to have used anticompetitive tactics in Brazil against online security firm PSafe and Qihoo 360. |
| October 9 2014 | Baidu announced the acquisition of Brazilian local e-commerce site Peixe Urbano. |
| August 2014 | Baidu's search market share in China dropped to 56.3%, while competitor Qihoo 360's market share increased to 29.0%. |
| July 18 2014 | Baidu launched its Brazilian version of the search engine, Baidu Busca. |
| May 16 2014 | Baidu appointed Dr. Andrew Ng as chief scientist, tasking him to lead Baidu Research in Silicon Valley and Beijing. |
| August 14 2013 | Baidu finalized the merger agreement to acquire 91 Wireless Web-soft Limited from NetDragon Web-soft Inc. for $1.85 billion, which was reported as the largest deal in China's IT sector at the time. |
| August 2 2013 | Baidu launched its Personal Assistant app, designed to help CEOs, managers, and white-collar workers manage business relationships. |
| July 16 2013 | Baidu announced its intention to purchase 91 Wireless from NetDragon, a significant acquisition in China's tech sector. |
| 2012 | A third-party company developed an English-language interface tool for advertising on Baidu, making the platform more accessible to non-Chinese speaking advertisers |
| November 18 2012 | Baidu announced a partnership with Qualcomm to offer free cloud storage to Android users with Snapdragon processors. |
| August 6 2012 | BBC reported the arrest of three Baidu employees on suspicion of accepting bribes for deleting posts from the forum service. Four additional employees were fired in connection with these arrests. |
| July 31 2012 | Baidu announced a partnership with Sina to provide mobile search results. |
| April 2012 | Baidu JDC long live applied for a patent for 'DNA copyright recognition' technology, which automatically scans and filters uploaded files to prevent copyright infringement. |
| February 22 2012 | Hudong submitted a complaint to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, accusing Baidu of monopolistic behavior. |
| May 2011 | Activists filed a lawsuit against Baidu in the United States, alleging violation of the U.S. Constitution through government-demanded censorship. A U.S. judge ultimately ruled that Baidu has the right to block search results under freedom of speech. |
| August 2010 | Wall Street Journal reports Baidu's search-advertising market share grew to 70%, benefiting from Google's move out of China. |
| January 12 2010 | Baidu.com suffered a DNS records attack in the United States, where browsers were redirected to a website claiming to be from the Iranian Cyber Army. The attack made the site unusable for four hours, with users seeing a message stating 'This site has been attacked by Iranian Cyber Army'. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Baidu, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.