Does Robin Li of Baidu have the hardest job in the world?

The Chinese search giant is growing at incredible rates and dominates its home market. That means it has to contend not only with a domineering government, but also with cunning state-run media and increasingly aggressive private competitors.

Unlike Google, Baidu, China’s largest search engine, cooperates with the government’s policy of censorship. The western press commonly asks the company’s CEO, Robin Li, how he justifies such a decision. Naturally, Li’s responses are generally quite deferential to the government. An unfavorable onlooker might even consider some of his rhetoric to veer precariously close to pandering. Take, for instance, Li’s dictum on big tech in China: “…walking the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the well-spring of strength that will allow the Chinese Internet to continue its healthy and rapid development.”

So it came as quite a surprise when CCTV, one of the government’s many state-run media organizations, aired a damning 26-minute documentary on Li’s company last month. Millions of Chinese viewers watched footage of a Baidu (BIDU) employee helping a man posing as the owner of what he admitted to be a sham healthcare company buy a fraudulent advertisement for a phony weight-loss pill. For weeks, the media speculated on the rationale behind the attack, which struck many as particularly harsh. Was the government getting uncomfortable with Baidu’s monopoly on the search market? (It controls about 80% of the market.) Or was CCTV acting out of commercial opportunism, since the broadcaster is also developing a search engine of its own? Did someone at CCTV have a personal vendetta against a higher-up at Baidu?

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The Gates Notes – Read Bill Gates’ Mind from Here

The Gates Notes is a wonderful repository of thought from Bill Gates, on topics as diverse as energy, healthcare, development and education

Be sure to bookmark it

The Gates Notes

Larry Ellison sets sights on promoting sailing

Larry Ellison’s team had just won another sailing race. His gear was still damp from the salt spray and the Champagne, and he was wearing a gold medal around his neck.

“The gold medalist passenger,” Ellison said mockingly of himself as he sat for an interview.

A self-made billionaire who co-founded Oracle Corp. and is one of the world’s wealthiest men, he remains a conspicuous consumer in a nasty economy: A collector of trophy properties and, after quite a chase on the water and in the New York courts, the America’s Cup trophy, too.

Ellison, an accomplished sailor, hopes to take a more active role when the real America’s Cup is raced in a 72-foot version of these catamarans in 2013 on San Francisco Bay.

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Mark Pincus – The Newest Billionaire in Silicon Valley

Zynga, the maker of Mafia Wars and FarmVille, is about to go public in the biggest tech stock offering since Google. Gary Rivlin profiles the company’s iconoclastic founder.

He had a net worth north of $30 million. He had given birth to two successful tech startups; he owned a house on a hill overlooking San Francisco. He owned, or at least co-owned, a plane.

But in 2004, Mark Pincus, aging whiz kid creeping up on 40 and with crow’s feet deepening around his eyes, felt he hadn’t really made it in Silicon Valley.  Charlie Rose’s producers never phoned to have him on the show. Heads didn’t turn when he walked into a room. Strangers didn’t instantly recognize him the way they recognized Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

But with Zynga—the online game maker behind Mafia Wars, FarmVille, and other elaborate time wasters that he founded in 2007—poised to go public on Friday, Pincus is certainly A-list now. The company he named after his bulldog, now deceased, is expected to raise around $1 billion, making it the largest tech IPO since Google. And with its public offering, Pincus is set to become Silicon Valley’s newest billion-dollar man.

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Bill Gates Changing the World Again, One Vaccine Drop at a Time

How to make GlaxoSmithKline and other pharma giants to produce enough expensive vaccines for children who need them most but can afford them least? The answer, Gates increasingly believed, lay in making Adam Smith’s invisible hand more visible, giving the newly formed market a benevolent shove in the direction of free enterprise.

Thus, in his new avatar (oh well, there are some who say he could make a return to run Microsoft, but that I’m sure, are just rumours), Gates will be changing the world, not one PC at a time, but one vaccine drop at a time.

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Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt Own 8 Private Jets Together?

Or so claims this article from Gizmodo.

Why would three people (even granted they are some of the richest in the world) require 8 aircraft? Different people have different opinions, and you can see all those in the comments.

You are entitled to have your own opinion too.

Could Microsoft Really Collapse? That Is Steve Ballmer’s Nightmare

Microsoft, one of the most successful software companies ever, has sales of nearly $70 billion a year, annual profits approaching $20 billion, nearly $60 billion in cash, and is still growing sales around 10% per year.

But somehow, some people in Silicon Valley are convinced that Microsoft is going to collapse. Soon. Like in the next few years.

Why do they think so.

Here’s the nightmare scenario that could keep Steve Ballmer and his minions awake at night — and keep him working long hours during the day to prevent it. Read more

Sean Parker – as much a “party boy” as he is made out to be?

Sean Parker, 31, director of Spotify, founding president of Facebook and a tech titan worth $2.1 billion, was toasting his betrothal to the gamine singer-songwriter Alexandra Lenas. And he was about to live up to his reputation—crystallized by Justin Timberlake in last year’s The Social Network—as the most party-hardy geek in town.

His genius, and his billionaire status, is I guess pretty much owing to his ability to spot the potential for Facebook which even Zuck might have underestimated…anyway, he appears to have decided to do some partying with his wealth

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Facebook could go for $100 billion IPO?

Five years ago Mark Zuckerberg blew the business world’s collective mind by turning down an acquisition offer for $1 billion from Yahoo at the ripe young age of 22. Facebook’s explosive growth in popularity combined with Zuckerberg’s cavalier attitude and apparently unflinching dismissal of an offer that would have instantly made him a deca-millionaire many times over was instrumental in turning him from a young hotshot entrepreneur to a cultural icon.

Turning down a billion dollars at age 22 takes serious chutzpah. Almost everyone thought he was a little crazy. And yet now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook is finally getting ready for its much-anticipated IPO sometime in the first half of next year, set to raise $10 billion in cash for the company at a valuation of $100 billion. As for Yahoo, Facebook has lapped its would-be acquirer. Its expected annual revenue of $4 billion is bigger than Yahoo’s. In fact, it’s Zuckerberg who could now make a move to acquire Yahoo, if his company saw any use for the aging web giant.

WSJ notes Zuckerberg’s share holding in the company is set to raise his personal wealth to $24 billion, which would make him the 14th richest person in the world according to the Forbes 400 list from 2011, and the 5th richest in the US, just behind the Walton family of Walmart’s fortune.

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