Baidu apologises for outage in its China search service

Baidu, mainland China’s largest online search operator, has apologised for a temporary service suspension.

“Regarding the sudden inaccessibility of our mobile search site to the public, we are conducting emergency trouble-shooting,” the company said in a statement at its account on Weibo - the microblogging site operated by Sina.com - at around 9:20pm. “We apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

The company’s desktop search service was not affected, it added.

Some 19 minutes later, the company said in a separate Weibo posting that its mobile search service was resumed, and again apologised to users.

The company’s spokesperson said it has no further comment to make.

Baidu had 665 million of monthly mobile search service active users in December last year, according to Baidu’s fourth quarter earnings report released last week.

The firm on Friday reported a second consecutive quarter of sales decline as it struggles to regain traction after last year’s public backlash from the death of a medical student linked to an advertising fiasco.

Sales dipped 2.6 per cent to 18.21 billion yuan (HK$20.55 billion) during the fourth quarter, slightly better than the market expected.

Net profit was 4.61 billion yuan. The year-ago period’s net income was non-comparable because of a one-off gain when Baidu exchanged online travel service operator Qunar shares with rival Ctrip, bolstering the figure to 25.05 billion yuan.