By Chris Chang, posted Jun 25, 2012 at 5:50 AM, 881 views,

CEO of Baidu Is The Fifth Richest Internet Guru on Earth, And Most Outstanding China CEO

CEO of Baidu? Really? HELL YES! Introducing Robin Li, the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of China’s Baidu search engine. Li now sits among Internet entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos (1st), Larry Page (2nd), Sergey Brin (3rd) and Mark Zuckerberg (4th), being the fifth richest Internet entrepreneur in the entire world, with a net worth of $10.2 billion.

Here’s something interesting about Robin Li. Li once held a job developing a software program for the Wall Street Journal’s online edition, and it was there that Li began his fascination with search engines. He then innovated something that analyze a webpage’s link popularity based on how many other sites linked to it, and he called that search method as “link analysis”. Sounds pretty cool huh?

So how did Li founded Baidu? Well, after spending almost 10 years of time in the United States, Li headed back to China in 2000, and founded Baidu with his friend. Later, Baidu got listed on the Nasdaq in 2005. You may not know, the Baidu name, literally translated as “100 times”, comes from an 800-year-old Chinese poem about the search for a “retreating beauty”. And here’s the most interesting part, Robin Li’s first office was a hotel room near Peking University.

So last question, how did Li become one of the richest Internet gurus in the world? Well, he did something Google would never do. You may remember Google created a furor by refusing to censor its search engine in China. Here’s the turning point: Baidu shares, together with Li’s fortune, skyrocketed in 2010 after Google exited China early that year. And today, Baidu owns 78-percent share of China’s search engine market, and Baidu has become a search engine that is weak on piracy and strong on censorship. It is very much in keeping with China — a country that mixes ultra- capitalist economics with authoritarian communist politics.

Here’s our thoughts on Robin Li: He is the man who beat Google to dominate China’s Internet market, and other rich Internet entrepreneurs should be friends with this Chinese man.

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