Baidu Sees Record Profit Losses In Q2

The Chinese search engine Baidu has reported a substantial drop in profits for the second quarter of 2016. The company reported a 34.1% drop in profit compared to last year's Q2 report. Whilst it is the most used search engine in China, it has suffered a range of controversies in the first half of this year concerning its advertising standards, and it has also had to change its regulations following a public enquiry. Now with a changed advertising policy, Baidu CEO Robin Li told investors that the recovery could take more than two or three quarters. Li also said that “a significant portion of revenue” had been lost, but that it has made steps that “will result in long term benefit and reward”. Meanwhile, Alphabet, Google's parent company, has seen strong profit growth over the same period. Due to strong advertising sales, particularly on mobile, it saw net income rise from 3.9 billion US dollars in Q2 2015, to 4.9 billion US dollars at the same point this year. Alphabet's CEO, Sundar Pichai, also said that it had used AI in order to make better video recommendations on YouTube, further strengthening its position in the industry. 

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