SMS frenzy and turning worms

It's been a very busy week with various deadlines but I have been keeping an eye on the news. My two favourite China media-related stories this week:

1. The Baidu Europe saga: Many companies have been surprised to discover their brands ( or something very close to their brands) being used by somebody else in China. No doubt the boys at Baidu will be interested in the announcement of baidu.eu with which it seems they are not connected. Fons Tuinstra has been following this closely (see here and here for more). Maybe this is just a repeat of Web 1.0 'hijacking' of URLs. But, as Fons says, "when Baidu China decides to take legal action, it seems that they have a fair chance of winning."
   
2. SMS frenzy: We have written regularly about the mobile opportunity in China and possible business applications of SMS on a massive scale. The size of this potential was underlined by the news reported by PanAsianBiz that in Beijing alone, some 400 million text messages were sent on the Chinese New Year's Eve!! Business Week's New Tech in Asia blog suggested that the number for the whole holiday could be as high as 14 billion.

Still focusing on Baidu, we were interested to see as well the Seeking Alpha piece titled "Can Baidu Survive Google's Ferocious Uppercut?" Analayst Roger Ehrenberg suggests "it appears that Google's persistence, ability to listen and learn and long-term focus has caused it to rapidly close the gap, posing a real threat to Baidu in its home market. Further, some Baidu missteps are hampering its own efforts to continue its meteoric growth in China and to maintain its hometown advantage".