Baidu seeks growth through online TV deal

The investment gives the Chinese search powerhouse an 8.3 per cent stake in digital video platform UiTV, which will in turn operate Baidu Internet TV Channel. The channel, which is hosted on movie.baidu.com, will allow users to download movies and TV shows authorised by copyright holders including TVB and Enlight. Baidu says it will be unlike its video search platform, video.baidu.com.

Baidu’s move came weeks after it began closed beta tests of an e-commerce site it hopes will rival sector leader Alibaba, and months after it launched an instant messaging platform to go up against Tencent’s popular QQ Messenger. Sources from China say that Baidu’s ambitions have spurred a backlash from competitors. Alibaba and several social networking sites recently blocked Baidu from crawling their pages.

Baidu’s entrance into the online video market also pits it against popular video sites Tudou and Youku, which are both struggling to turn a profit in the nascent video-sharing industry. A spokeswoman for Tudou said Baidu’s potential impact on the market was “hard to say”.

She added: “Baidu has also entered the instant messenger and online auction markets, and so far its investments haven’t changed the market.”

According to Lonnie Hodge, CEO of CultureFish Media, Baidu is in danger of losing its influence in China’s digital sector by spreading itself too thin.