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Netizens outraged by Baidu's response to fake hospital ads
China’s biggest search engine says users should use its other app instead
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Chinese internet users are finding it hard to find what they want on the country’s dominant search engine.
Last week, writer Liuliu scolded Baidu and CEO Robin Li on Weibo after searching for the US Consulate in Shanghai and only finding a page of ads instead -- with no link to the official site, which led to an apology from Baidu.
How Baidu's Robin Li founded China's answer to Google
And then, over the weekend, China’s state broadcaster CCTV aired a news segment about a woman in Shanghai who searched for a local public hospital for rhinitis treatment. Instead of the public hospital, the woman was led to a different hospital with a very similar name instead. That hospital charged the woman more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,472) for an operation -- before she went to the real hospital, and discovered that an operation was unnecessary.
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Baidu has been repeatedly under fire for sponsored search results, ever since a university student died in 2016 after undergoing a treatment found via a sponsored search result. The company scaled back on paid advertising after that, but users and Chinese media say it’s coming back.
Baidu’s CEO Robin Li isn’t afraid of Google’s rumored comeback to China
Baidu apologized again after the CCTV report, and said that it will stop showing ads when users search for public hospitals. In another article, Baidu explained to users what they can do when seeing sponsored results.
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