Baidu news

Via the Chinamemes site, we were interested to see this piece on Baidu being granted an Internet news content service license. This is a big deal in the Chinese media world; the transition from being an entertainment or information provider to one authorised to print news is a big one. It's also one which most foreign companies, for the foreseeable future at least, won't be able to make.

The Shanghai Daily quotes one government official saying "A news license is a rare resource to Internet companies in China. So far only very few Websites are allowed to report news legally in the country".

It was obviously a big day for Baidu as China Web 2.0 Review reports that it has a new-look home page. As well as providing screen shots of what to me look like two remarkably similar pages, it notes "The most important change in this new version is adding links of login and Baidu Space onto homepage. Baidu Space is already one of the top 5 most popular blogging service in China, by adding link of Baidu Space in its homepage, the users of Baidu Space is expected to increase significantly due to the high traffic of Baidu’s search service."