Yunyun.com’s Founder Flees Company, Joins Baidu

Chinese search engine provider Baidu Inc. confirmed that Liu Jun, founder of Yunyun.com, has formally joined Baidu as vice president of technology.

However, Baidu did not reveal if they plan to acquire Yunyun.com.

Founded in 2010 by Liu, Yunyun.com is a social search website. Before establishing this website, Liu worked for Microsoft and Google. He was vice director of Google's engineering research institute in China and global engineering technology director, leading Google's Chinese-language search services as well as the establishment and development of the engineering team.

Yunyun.com is positioned as a social search engine, which combines a social network and search engine. By integrating people and information, it claims to provide accurate and customized research results for users. The website previously cooperated with Jike.com, which is also a search engine provider, and Qihoo 360's search service.

With three years' operation, Yunyun.com did not have a rapid growth period, which is reportedly the reason why Liu is leaving and possibly shows Yunyun.com's decline and Liu's lack of operational capacity to make Yunyun.com succeed.

Baidu said in his new role, Liu will lead the operation of the company's technical strategy commission and support the development and innovation of Baidu's key businesses.