Baidu Hit with RMB 174 Mln Antitrust Suit
Legal Daily, 11/09/08
Lawyer Li Changqing of the Beijing firm George Wu and Partners has filed an antitrust complaint against search giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) on behalf of the Hebei-based medical information site Qmyyw.com. The complaint asks for an investigation of Baidu's alleged abuse of its market position, and seeks damages of RMB 174.44 mln.
From March to September 2008, Qmyyw.com reportedly signed an RMB 89,000 competitive ranking services deal with Baidu that would place Qmyyw.com in the top three results. From June to August, as the site was redesigning, it dropped its competitive ranking payments to the lowest tier, which resulted in monthly visits to Qmyyw.com dropping from 88,095 unique IP addresses the previous month to 18,340 IP addresses, and average daily visits dropping from 2,936 unique visitors to 611, with some members unable to find Qmyyw.com by searching.
Baidu responded that the listing or delisting of a site in its search engine was unrelated to Baidu's bid ranking service, but rather to whether or not the inclusion of the site's content in Baidu's index would provide a "good search experience" for Baidu users.
Keywords: online advertising Li Changqing George Wu and Partners Qmyyw antitrust Baidu BIDU Internet SAIC Internet traffic law litigation online search
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