Baidu as a verb

Before: Baidu search!

After: Baidu it!

Baidu has taken the final step in turning its name into a verb. The company has been using 百度一下, “Baidu it!” in its advertisments for quite a while now, but last week it changed over its search button (the first image above is from a Google cached copy the version of 9 May).

The Baidu Fans website notes that the titlebar to the Baidu search page was changed to “百度一下，你就知道” (Baidu it and you’ll find out) back in February. The Fans website also contains a historical overview of the metamorphosis of Baidu’s homepage.

In a blog post, Zhai Hua wonders why Baidu isn’t afraid of diluting its trademark and “genericiding” its brand:

Genericide is an English word thought up by branding and intellectual property experts….I think that you could translate it as “庸俗死” (“death by vulgarity”). Examples of genericide can also be found in China. At the beginning of the last century, there was an American company named Simmons that specialized in steel and copper spring mattresses and bedding. At first Simmons was translated as 雪门斯, but advertising results were not good. Later, the company had a stroke of genius and changed its translated name to 席梦思*, and this name spread far and wide. 席梦思 gradually became another name for spring mattresses in Chinese, until there were places manufacturing 席梦思 all across the country. That American company could not avoid “genericide.”

I ask all googlers out there to Baidu it: Why does Google go all out to avoid genericide, and why is Baidu so unafraid?

Note: This post previously included a mistaken back-translation of 席梦思 – “thinking and dreaming on the mat.” A reader has written in to inform me of the name’s actual literary pedigree: it comes from the line 日有所思，夜有所梦, which refers to something that fills both your waking and sleeping thoughts. So Simmons is something consumers will long for even in their dreams.