联合调查组：百度竞价排名须整改

简介：联合调查组公布调查结果，百度竞价排名须整改。 JN: China's regulators have imposed limits on the number of healthcare adverts carried by Baidu, China's biggest Internet search engine. The restrictions follow publicity surrounding the death of a student who underwent cancer treatment which he found using Baidu. It's estimated such adverts account for up to 30 percent of the company's search revenue. MB: Now, Baidu's Nasdaq-listed shares dropped by more than 3% on Monday, and the company has also set aside around 150 million dollars to be paid out in compensation, so how will this investigation and its result influence Baidu, both financially and in terms of its reputation? Victor Gao: Well, I think Baidu has been hit hard, and while there are many parties in this whole incident which eventually may need to be held responsible, Baidu has been singled out in a more prominent manner, at least in the Chinese-language media and in Chinese society, mainly because Baidu is not only well known in China but also globally known, and it has deep pockets, it has very large capitalization, and its chairman and founder Mr Li is well known in China. Therefore, while there is a lot of anger and indignation about the unfortunate passing away of Mr Wei, it is natural for the public anger to be focused very much on Baidu. However, I would say Baidu also needs to learn a big lesson from this unfortunate incident, and the regulators, on the other hand, need to check out the more substantive nature of this case, and Baidu is actually a partial party to this whole incident. The real culprits should be the doctors, the medical assistants, the clinic which performed the treatment on Mr Wei. [It needs to be discovered] whether they have licenses, whether they have made falsified or fraudulent representations to Mr Wei and the family members et cetera. To really just focus on Baidu is a little bit partial and unfortunate. LK: But it was Baidu who was the company who listed the service there, so do you think there’s anything Baidu should have done previously to prevent this kind of advert from being published in the first place? Victor Gao: Well, the unfortunate death of Mr Wei is not the only or first incident involving Baidu in a negative manner, as far as its predominant reliance on paid-in advertisements for medical providers. As a matter of fact, Baidu should have known earlier enough, many years ago, that a good, reputable hospital in China does not need to run such kinds of online advertisements, or at least, you know, to pay a high sum to have a higher ranking. A good hospital in China has its own reputation travel far and beyond by the quality of the services, the reputation of the doctors, the credibility of the medical services, et cetera. You really do not need to run such advertisements, so Baidu should have asked itself the natural and logical question: why there are so-called medical service providers who are so eager to pay high sums to get their ranking beefed up to the top of the listing, and some of these so-called medical service providers are not real medical service providers, and while we need to learn more information in the investigation process, of course, I think evidence seems to present the case that some of these doctors do not have licenses, some of their representations are completely falsified, and I think it becomes a dangerous game for these providers to use fraudulent means to sell their services to patients, whereas Baidu, unfortunately, has become party [to] this kind of scheme, at least, or even a fraudulent arrangement. In that sense, I think Baidu should have known better, and their legal services, their corporate services need to really beef up their scrutiny of these advertisement seekers who actually may have illegitimate purposes to beef up their ranking in the category of service providers in medical services.