While the average American "netizen" may not be familiar with the services Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) offers, just ask someone from the world's most populous country and it's a different story. Billed by many as "China's Google", Baidu is a web services company headquartered in Beijing.
Founded in 2000, Baidu originally started out as the go-to search engine for Chinese-speaking web users. As is often the case with web services companies, Baidu has been pushing the technology envelope ever since it became the first Chinese company to be included in the tech-heavy NASDAQ index, and continues to do so today. Baidu is currently available in Chinese and Japanese, and serves the following countries: China, Japan, Thailand, Egypt, and India.
It is of no surprise, therefore, to learn that Baidu has been performing well in the NASDAQ - up 390% since joining in December 2007. While many told-you-so investors have been saying this for years, many experts say now is as good a time as ever to buy the roughly $152 price per share Baidu stock.
Last week, Baidu was one of NASDAQ's most traded stocks, with a net volume up nearly 54% from the previous three-month average. The unusually high volume change likely signals that hedge funds and momentum traders are jumping on a bandwagon ahead of a major trend. In this case, I think many investors are predicting an increase in the Baidu stock price.
These bullish attitudes are most likely due to the recent announcement that Baidu is creating its very own cloud storage service: Baidu WangPan. This service sets Baidu up to compete against online storage services such as Dropbox, Apple's (AAPL) iCloud, and Microsoft's (MSFT) SkyDrive. WangPan reportedly allows its users to store up to 15GB of data online, free of charge.
While 15GB is not a massive
