第一次造访百度公司(Baidu)的参观者，可能会以为自己到了硅谷。
这家中国互联网企业的总部设在北京，拥有8000多名员工，办公空间类似于美国硅谷的竞争对手，目的是激发员工迸发改变世界的创意。巨大的玻璃建筑包括自然光照明的开放空间，婴儿护理室，甚至屋顶花园——一个年轻人正在午日的阳光下小憩。
但是在现实中，在百度工作与这种第一印象颇为不同。在三楼会议室里，一群年轻工程师围坐在桌子旁，桌上杂乱摆放着笔记本电脑和垃圾食品包装袋。他们的工作不是去空想。
百度高管们解释称，在百度，首要任务不是拿出前沿技术，而是最终功能。
百度高级技术总监王梦秋表示，百度的产品开发理念与（竞争对手）谷歌(Google)不同。后者致力于“非常酷”的技术。她表示：“我们的理念有所不同——我们考虑的是用户最需要什么。”
王梦秋是百度元老，于2003年加入百度，此前获得加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)硕士学位，并在旧金山一家初创公司工作过一年。
这位扎着辫子的高管的见解提供了一个难得的机会，让人们得以了解这家传统上缄默的公司的文化。
百度一直不愿开放，尤其是对外国媒体，因为该公司对有关自己是谷歌模仿者的媒体报道耿耿于怀。
王梦秋对此类言论不以为然。她表示：“许多人说百度不能创新，这我不管，你必须问的是，人们是否需要全新的东西？”
王梦秋表示，例如，百度永远不会开发谷歌地球(Google Earth)这样的产品。她辩称，对于中国近5亿网民（百度的目标市场）而言，谷歌的互动世界地图没有什么价值。
她表示：“这是一款令人眼花缭乱、非常酷的产品，但真正思考一下，我们需要考虑的不仅仅是那些受过良好教育的高端用户。”
对百度来说，理想的有用产品之一是百度贴吧(Baidu Post Bar)，这是一个集合了搜索和社交网络的平台，根据网民所用的搜索关键词，帮助他们找到有共同需求和兴趣的人。
百度还一直重点开发让网络搜索更符合中国人喜好的功能。例如，其搜索框的大小就更适合汉字词组的平均长度。此外，百度还是最早提供联想词搜索的公司之一——该功能在中国尤其重要，因为汉字输入要比字母输入更繁琐。
另一方面，百度没有花太多时间和财力，研究如何搜索图片和视频。
与谷歌不同的是，百度的产品开发是由产品经理（而非工程师）决定的，这反映出两者的重点不同。
他们在搜索引擎用户中进行广泛研究，以确定产品内容。在许多西方高科技企业受到近乎膜拜礼遇的研发工程师，在百度的任务就是为产品经理想要的产品找到技术解决方案。
为了让整个过程尽可能切合实际，权力最大的产品营销部门的员工，均由网络搜索用户和客户等有实践经验的人组成。
有些人是互联网专家，他们花大量时间上网，对应用程序和网民习惯有着全面了解。还有一些人曾创立或运营网站，或曾担任新闻门户网站的编辑，或是有学位的信息管理专业毕业生。
虽然百度的研发人员异常忙碌，他们不能错失考虑新想法和创新的时机。30多岁的搜索技术项目经理Ivan Liu近来长时间地投入百度最新的研发项目——一种可搜索的应用开放平台，周末都在加班。他表示，员工们工作都很努力，但“真的很有热情”。
然而，尽管百度培养了员工为中国本土科技公司工作的自豪感，但他们仍感觉自己还没有完全赶上那些全球竞争对手。当被问及百度在哪个技术领域特别强时，Ivan笑了笑，接着轻声说：“和一些全球同行相比，我们仍有很长一段路要走。”
不过，百度的务实做法确实得到了回报。过去10年，在网民人数位居世界第一的中国，百度在大部分时间里都是遥遥领先的市场领导者。随着谷歌今年将Google.cn用户重新定向到香港站点（不在中国内地审查制度范围内），百度的市场份额有所扩大，目前已超过70%。
瑞士信贷(Credit Suisse)分析师张永恒(Wallace Cheung)表示：“成为一个快速模仿者没有错。中国互联网公司一直非常擅长将他人发明的概念商业化。”
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034468
A first-time visitor to Baidu could be forgiven for thinking they had wandered into Silicon Valley.
The Chinese internet company’s headquarters in Beijing, housing its 8,000-plus staff, resembles the spaces set up by its Californian counterparts to inspire employees to dream up world-changing ideas. The massive glass building comprises wide open spaces with natural light, a baby nursing room, and even roof gardens – where one young man is napping in the midday heat.
But the reality of working at the company is rather different from this first impression. In a third-floor meeting room, the group of young engineers gathered around a table cluttered with laptops and crumpled junk food wrappers, are not paid to dream.
At Baidu, the priority is not in producing cutting-edge technology but ultimate functionality, explain company executives.
Wang Mengqiu, senior director of technology and products, says Baidu’s product development philosophy differs from [rival search company] Google’s focus on “very cool” technology. “Our logic is different – we think about what users need most,” she says.
Ms Wang is a Baidu veteran, having joined in 2003 after obtaining a masters from UCLA and working at a San Francisco-based start-up for a year.
The pig-tailed executive’s insights provide a rare glimpse into the culture of a traditionally reticent company.
Baidu has been reluctant to open up, particularly to foreign media, because it has been stung by portrayals in the media that it is a Google imitator.
Ms Wang is defiant in the face of such suggestions. “I don’t care that many people say Baidu can’t innovate,” she says. “You have to ask whether completely new things are needed.”
She says Baidu would never have developed a product like Google Earth, for example. For China’s nearly 500m internet users – Baidu’s target market – Google’s interactive world map has very little value, she argues.
“It is a dazzling, very cool product, but really think for a moment. The users we need to consider are not just high-end, well-educated users,” she says.
Baidu’s ideal of a useful product is Baidu Post Bar, a forum that combines search and social networking to help internet users link up with people with the same needs and interests based on the web search keywords they use.
Its focus has also been on features that make web search more suitable to Chinese tastes. The size of its search box, for example, is a better fit for average phrases in Chinese characters. And the company was an early provider of predictive search, a function especially important in China, as typing is more cumbersome than in alphabet-based languages.
On the other hand, Baidu has refrained from spending too much time and money researching how to search the content of pictures and videos.
To reflect its different priorities, Baidu’s product development is driven not by engineers, as at Google, but by product managers.
They conduct extensive research among the search engine’s users to define product profiles. Research engineers, who enjoy almost cult status in many western technology firms, are relegated to finding technical solutions for what the product managers want.
To make the whole process as down-to-earth as possible, the product marketing department, which wields the most power in the process, is staffed with people with practical experience among users and customers of web search.
Some are internet boffins – people who spend huge amounts of time online and have a thorough understanding of applications and internet user habits. Others have founded or run websites, worked as editors at news portals, or are degree-qualified information management graduates.
Baidu’s research staff are far too busy to have time to miss the process of dreaming up ideas and innovations. Ivan Liu, a search technology project manager in his 30s who has toiled long hours and weekends on Baidu’s latest development – a searchable applications library – says employees work hard but are “really enthusiastic”.
And yet, while Baidu fosters a sense of pride in working for one of China’s own technology companies, there is still a sense that they do not quite measure up to global rivals. Asked if he can name a technology field in which Baidu is particularly strong, Mr Liu smiles and then says quietly: “Compared with some global peers, we still have a very long way to go.”
Nevertheless, Baidu’s pragmatic approach has certainly paid off. It has been the clear market leader in China, with the world’s largest internet population, for most of the past decade. And with Google’s move this year to redirect users of Google.cn to its Hong Kong website – which operates outside of mainland China’s censorship regime – Baidu’s market share has grown larger, now exceeding 70 per cent.
“There is nothing wrong with being a fast follower,” says Wallace Cheung, an analyst at Credit Suisse. “Chinese internet companies have been very good at monetising concepts invented by others.”
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