Baidu launches big-data search engine

Baidu Inc, China's Internet search giant, announced on April 24 the launch of a big-data engine, opening the company's capacity in storage, analysis and search of data to the public.

The Beijing company pledged to make its cloud computing, data factory and Baidu Brain — an artificial intelligence department — open platforms, aiming to offer services to allow traditional sectors to better use big-data technologies.

Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu, said that with the improvement of computing capacity and the reduced cost of technologies such as cloud storage, big data is on the verge of reshaping the future.

"Through opening Baidu's capacity in big data, we are hoping to help more traditional sectors dig out the value of data and better upgrade themselves in this new era," he said in Beijing at Baidu's fourth annual technology open house.

With the launch of the big-data engine, Baidu claims that it is the world's first company that offers such a service.

Li said that just as the Internet has reshaped people's daily life, technologies such as big data will reshape the Internet.

According to Baidu, the opening of the big-data engine is a step-by-step process. The service is currently open to those companies, which are invited by Baidu.

The company said it will first offer the services to the government, nongovernmental organizations, and those in traditional sectors, such as manufacturing, finance, retail, entertainment and education.

Baidu has already set up cooperation with a department of the Ministry of Transport in China. Through analyzing the search requests on Baidu Map, a map service based on computers and mobile devices, Baidu can predict the traveling trend days earlier and help transportation departments better manage traffic.