Structural Adjustments at Baidu

(This article, partially translated, first appeared on tech.qq.com on 03/02/2015. For full Chinese, click here.)

Almost two years later, Baidu is once again making a substantial adjustment to its business structure. Baidu recently released an internal e-mail announcing the division of its current business into three major groups: mobile services, emerging businesses and, of course, search engine.

Baidu's new group divisions represent the three main aspects of Baidu's business, in which its traditional core business is as a search platform, its mobile services are a future core business, and emerging enterprises is a field for breaking new ground.

Baidu vice presidents Liu Jun and Li Mingyuan will head mobile services; Zhang Yaqin will serve as president and Wang Zhan as vice president of emerging enterprises; Xiang Hailong will be chiefly in charge of Baidu's search business, with Wang Haifeng as vice president.

Compared with the last business structure adjustments, the leaders of each group will have considerably more authority.

The most distinctive feature of this round of adjustments is the rise in position of Li Mingyuan, under CEO Robin Li's patronage. Zhang Yaqin and Liu Jun are enjoying some of this windfall.

Besides these changes there is a line that hasn't been mentioned, that senior vice president Wang Jin will head a commercial products and technology systems sector. This side of business will work on the Baidu Institute, big data, open cloud, and manage the search giant's underlying technology and infrastructure architecture.

So Baidu is actually forming an internal "3 + 1" business system to create a clearer logical structure. One insider pointed out that in a rapidly changing market environment, organisational restructuring is the norm for large corporations.