The Chinese equivalent of the Google logo – meet Baidu

Baidu-logo-world-famous
Baidu-logo-world-famous

In this very moment – Baidu.com is # 9 most visited site in the world ( Alexa ranking ). Get used to it, because it’s the chinese “Google”.. and soon or late it will become THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE LOGO in the web… and in the world :)

Here’s what we read in Wikipedia :

” Baidu, Inc. (Baidu) (Chinese: 百度; pinyin: Bǎidù) (NASDAQ: BIDU), incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. In October 2008, Baidu ranked 9th overall in Alexa’s internet rankings. In December 2007 Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.

Interesting is the name itself :

Baidu was mentioned in an antient chinese poem.  The literal meaning is “hundreds of times”, represents persistent search for the ideal.

It’s typical textbook case of commercial web logo – mix of  two or more colors, the logotype is both in english and chinese with round sans-serif font. The dominant color is the most popular color in the country – red (  because of the national flag and all the propaganda ). It took me  a few minutes to understand why there’s a paw / pad.  Okey, animal signs and images are always working in a marketing point of view … but the main reason should be because the paw mark is a symbol of a track, of going after something, a search symbol. It’s really interesting and different from the magnifier cliche :)