TikTok's creator has a search engine, but the real challenge isn't Baidu

ByteDance's Toutiao Search takes on Baidu, but online content in China is increasingly siloed in different apps, making general search engines much less useful

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TikTok's creator has a search engine, but the real challenge isn't Baidu

Published: 11:35pm, 14 Aug 2019Updated: 9:11am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Baidu has been China’s king of search since Google pulled out of the country in 2010. Now it’s facing a new challenger, TikTok creator ByteDance, which unveiled a new search engine on Monday.

But the challenge for ByteDance might not be Baidu. A bigger problem might be that people in China don’t seem to care that much about online search at all.

Meet Baidu, China’s homegrown search engine

ByteDance, the creator of China’s biggest news aggregator Toutiao and the global short video sensation TikTok, now has a search engine named Toutiao Search. Bloomberg called it “the most serious threat yet” to Baidu, which has 76% market share in China, according to Statcounter. Despite years of complaints from users, Baidu hasn’t had much competition.

China’s viral king ByteDance is the first major Chinese tech player that made a mark on the world

While some users are applauding new competition, others are skeptical about whether a new player will make a difference for users. This is in part because of the unique experience of searching online in China.

Toutiao Search has not added a news feed like Baidu and Google’s mobile app. (Picture: Toutiao and Baidu)

Outside of China, there is no doubt that Google is unchallenged when it comes to search. The company controls 92% of the global search engine market. Even on mobile, people often first turn to Google when they need information -- news stories, navigation and even restaurant reviews (over which Google was sued).

Things are quite different in China, where users are much less likely to rely on search.

WeChat, for example, has become a primary news source for internet users in China, just as Facebook has outside China. But the massive amount of content produced by the more than 10 million content creators on the platform is inaccessible through search engines. The articles only exist on WeChat.