As of June 2025, 69.2 percent of internet users in China used search engines. The search engine penetration rate is the percentage of internet users using search engines.

As of June 2025, around 777.2 million people in China used search engines, experiencing a sharp decline. This represented 69.2 percent of the total internet user base.

The multinational technological corporation Baidu Inc reported an annual revenue of around 18.24 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Headquartered in Beijing, the company had rapidly grown into one of the Chinese prominent developers of internet and artificial intelligence services and products. Its Baidu.com is one of the world’s largest and China’s most popular search engine websites. China’s search engine market The number of search engine users in China amounted to 878 million in 2024, a majority of whom carried out their search activities on mobile devices. China’s search engine providers operate in a multibillion-yuan market. Forecasts for 2025 predicted the market size will reach 168 billion yuan. Of this, Baidu holds the largest market shares in terms of page views as well as the most preferred mobile search engine. Baidu – products and services Baidu’s global services range from algorithm, enterprise, and image searches to navigation, online storage and news. The wildly popular DuerOS voice platform enabled smart speakers are exemplar of Baidu’s progress in operating with AI. Its online video streaming platform iQiyi, which is often touted as “China’s Netflix” has proved to be a viable business. However, the tech giant still primarily relies on online marketing services for revenue generation.

In 2024, Baidu spent more than ** billion yuan on research and development, which was * billion yuan lower compared to the previous year. Having started out as China’s largest search engine, Baidu has branched out into developing several more technologies within the AI sector, particularly voice assistant and autonomous driving. The Chinese AI pioneer In 2023, China’s artificial intelligence market size amounted to three times its size back in 2019. For a long time, it has been clear for Baidu that AI will be the future tech arena. In 2013, it opened an AI research lab in Silicon Valley, developing technologies like visual perception, speech recognition, and human-machine interaction. Baidu’s active AI venture made it the largest owner of machine learning and AI patents in 2022. Baidu’s AI investments Among all trending arms of AI, Baidu has gained a foothold in voice control systems and smart vehicle software. Its self-developed voice assistant DuerOS reported billions of monthly voice queries, and its smart speaker Xiaodu accounted for nearly ** percent of all smart speaker shipments in China. When it comes to self-driving car systems, Baidu was among the second-largest owners of autonomous driving patents worldwide in 2022. The AI race has not ended here; the tech company is currently looking into other opportunities, such as robots and smart healthcare.