Acquisition of Baike.com Puts ByteDance on par With Rival Baidu

ByteDance has completed the acquisition of Baike.com, an encyclopedia service provider and rival to Baidu‘s similar services, according to Tuya. The company now holds 100% of Baike.com’s shares.

As the nearly 1-year-old acquisition case has come to an end, ByteDance is one step further in challenging Baidu‘s position in the free encyclopedia area. Including its search engine, ByteDance has finished early business deployment in Baidu‘s key area — internet search.

SEE ALSO: ByteDance Invests in Online Encyclopedia Baike to Compete with Baidu

On August 27, founding members of Baike.com as well as previous investors retreated, while ByteDance’s sub-company subscribed contribution of 30.5 million yuan ($4.3 million) as the new investor.

ByteDance’s head of Strategy and Investment Yan Shou was appointed Baike’s corporate representative.

As of early 2019, Baike.com had over 18 million items with over 25 million pictures, covering 12 million people. Baidu Baike, Baidu‘s online encyclopedia website, however, collected over 13.7 million terms, as of May 2019.

By acquiring Baike.com, ByteDance may have taken the lead in terms of encyclopedia services against its competitor Baidu. But it is still new to the search engine field. Its own search engine called Toutiao Search was launched in late July, while Baidu remains the biggest search engine in China with a market share of up to 70.3% percent as of August, according to statcounter, a global web traffic analysis website.