Baidu Wangpan (; translation: Baidu Web Drive) is a

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

service provided by

Baidu, Inc. Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...

, headquartered in Haidian District in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

. It offers a

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client software In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, in ...

, file management, resources sharing, and Third Party Integration. After being created on one client terminal, files can be synchronized automatically on other internet-connected client terminals. It was launched as Baidu WangPan on 23 March 2012. On 22 August 2013, an offer of permanent free 2

terabyte The byte is a units of information, unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character (computing), character of text in a computer and for this ...

s of storage for users was announced.

History

Launch of Baidu WangPan

The March 2012 Baidu Developer Conference released a Cloud development strategy, including the launch of a Developer Center Website (http://developer.baidu.com/en/), and a cloud storage platform called Baidu WangPan, meaning "web disk", for individual users. Baidu WangPan had PC and Android client terminals, provided users a free 15 GB of space and allowed users to upload files and access them. It operated in competition with established Cloud operations such as

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

Investment in Cloud Computing Center

On 19 August 2012, Baidu started to build its Cloud Computing Center in

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's Yangquan, which is the hometown of Baidu's Founder

Robin Li Robin Li Yanhong (; born 17 November 1968) is a Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of the search engine Baidu. As of March 2022, his net worth was estimated at US$8.5 billion. Li studied inform ...

. Baidu was reported to invest CNY4.708 billion in this center, with CNY2.92 billion for equipment and CNY1.788 billion for infrastructure. It aimed to "attract the world's top information technology manufacturers, and promote the information technology industry development in Yangquan and Shanxi."

Upgrade to Baidu Cloud

During the 2012 Baidu World Conference, Baidu announced upgrades to Baidu WangPan, and a re-branding to "Baidu Cloud". It also launched a new logo, using graphics of clouds, which has been used since. It also issued "seven weapons" for developers, including: PCS, Screen X technical building services Site App, applications, cloud MTC LBS moving clouds, cloud Test Engine, Baidu engine BAE, and kernel browsing.

Partnership with Qualcomm

On 19 November 2012, Baidu offered free cloud storage for

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

chip-based devices. It provided

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-powered Android phones with 30GB cloud storage, which had been tailored to suit the Snapdragon S4 MSM 8×25 processor and the Snapdragon S4 MSM8x25Q processor.

Participation in Chinese Cloud Storage War

On 22 August 2013, Baidu Cloud announced its offer of 2 terabytes of free permanent storage for users, as its strategy in the Cloud Storage 'war' in China. The other competitors in the war included

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the w ...

, and

Qihoo 360 Qihoo 360 (; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name 360 Security Technology Inc., is a Chinese internet security company that has developed the antivirus software programs 360 Safeguard and 360 Mobile Safe, the Web browser 360 Secure Bro ...

Sina Sina may refer to: Relating to China * Chin (China), or Sina (), old Chinese form of the Sanskrit name Cina () ** Shina (word), or Sina ( ja, 支那, links=no), archaic Japanese word for China ** Sinae, Latin name for China Places * Sina, Alban ...

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

, 115.com. Before the war, China’s free storage services were mainly focused on storage capacity under 15GB.

Rename to Baidu Wangpan

On 11 October 2016, Baidu Yun were renamed to Baidu Wangpan. Meanwhile, its cloud computing services were renamed to Baidu Yun.

Notorious Markets list

In 2022, the

Office of the United States Trade Representative The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting Trade policy of the United States, American trade ...

named Baidu Wangpan on its

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of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy.

Technology

File management

Baidu Wangpan supports preview of files of photos, musics, videos and documents on each of its client terminal without downloading them as local files. The videos can be viewed directly on the

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s, Android system, and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

system. It provides file synchronization, enabling users to upload and download files of different types. It supports file sharing between different users, and different devices.

Resource sharing

Baidu Wangpan provides a platform to share resources. Combined with its own search engine, users can search resources and browse them online.

Third party integration

Baidu's cloud operation can be divided into two main categories: 1. Personal users (http://yun.baidu.com), and 2. Developers (https://web.archive.org/web/20140517205344/http://developer.baidu.com/en/), which is the Open Cloud.

Controversy

On 26 December 2013, the Japanese government's National Information Security Center (NISC) and Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology advised 140 institutions to either disable the cloud-input function of Baidu Input Method Editors (IMEs) or stop using Baidu IMEs. According to Bloomberg News, Tsuneo Tosaka, IDC Japan's Software & Security Research Manager claimed: "Baidu provides the service using a cloud server, which means content flows through servers in China" and "Government-related documents from Japan central ministries and findings from university research institutions are important, so there is a possibility that sensitive information leaks abroad." NISC also suggested not using Google input software and Microsoft input software.

References

{{File hosting service File hosting File sharing services Baidu Cloud storage Companies' terms of service Notorious markets