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Baidu says it may take 6 years before it can offer its full metaverse


Baidu Vice President Ma Jie gives reporters in Beijing a preview on December 21, 2021, of how the company’s metaverse app XiRang will hold its developer conference.

Baidu

BEIJING – While the hype of the metaverse has spread around the world this year, one of China’s tech giants in the game has unveiled a version of the virtual ecosystem it’s so far.

The Metaverse can be loosely defined as the next generation of the internet – a virtual world in which humans interact through three-dimensional avatars. Huge social network Facebook jumped into the trend in October, renamed to Meta and announced plans to invest $10 billion in related investments over the next year.

Similarly, China is causing a stir with reverse headlines. Headquartered in Beijing Baidu plans to hold its annual developer event on Monday in the metaverse app’s virtual world, XiRang. The company claims it will be China’s first metaverse conference.

However, at a preview event on Tuesday, the executive in charge of XiRang downplayed expectations by noting how many aspects have yet to equal.

Ma Jie, Baidu’s vice president, told reporters in Mandarin, having started developing the app last December, but still have “six yin years” left to fully launch. To questions, such as someone asking for details about that timeline, Ma said apologetically: “That’s a very good question, but I may not have a very good answer.”

Ma Jie, vice president at Baidu, shares the company’s metaverse plan at a media event in Beijing on December 21, 2021.

Evelyn Cheng | CNBC

Baidu’s app can hold 100,000 virtual attendees for Monday’s conference, Ma said.

He said Baidu aims to build an open source platform for metaverse developers – an infrastructure for the virtual world.

Monday’s event marks the opening of XiRang to developers, mainly in China for now.

“The metaverse, while a buzzword in the global technology and investment communities, is still in its infancy,” said Brian Tycangco, an analyst at Stansberry Research. said. “Many people don’t even fully understand what this word means today or what it will mean in three to five years.”

Baidu’s timeline reflects the company’s understanding of the metaverse, its cautious approach to managing expectations and China’s regulatory environment, he said. “Baidu is clearly trying to go ahead to ‘own’ the metaverse in its domestic market while abiding by Beijing’s new policies to prevent monopolistic situations, hence the open platform.”

The Chinese government has cracked down on alleged monopolistic practices by China’s internet tech giants with fines and new regulations over the past 18 months. Beijing also enacted a new data privacy law this year. Analysts say policymakers are trying address income inequality problemswhile supporting innovation-driven growth.

Baidu said in a statement to CNBC that openness is an inherent part of the company and that by promoting open source development, applications can be adopted more widely and more quickly.

The company was founded nearly 22 years ago as an internet search engine and has since shifted its focus to cloud computing, artificial intelligence, robot and other technologies.

China’s internet is tightly controlled by the government, with foreign social networking sites Facebook and Twitter blocked. Google only operated its search engine in China for a short time.

Global metaverse fever

Analysts disagree on how fast China’s metaverse is evolving compared to that of the US

Alibaba has a website advertising its metaverse cloud services. In November, Tencent Chairman Martin Lau said on an earnings call that he hopes the Chinese government will support the development of metaverse technologies, with regulations specific to the Chinese market.

In the first day of this month, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he expected that in two or three years, most virtual meetings will move to the metaverse. At the same time, Facebook (Meta) announced its virtual reality ecosystem, Horizon Worlds, will end the invite-only phase and become free to anyone 18 years of age or older in the United States and Canada. Users can interact with other avatars and build their own worlds and games in the system.

In the words of Dan Ives, senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, “the six-year timeline for Baidu is disappointing to hear for investors and one scratching their heads because they’ll miss out.” this huge metaverse market in the coming years.” Ives expects metaverse monetization to begin in 2024 and grow to a larger scale next year.

Demonstrations of Baidu’s XiRang app on Tuesday showed avatars possessing superhuman abilities such as being able to sometimes go through walls or other objects. Some parts of the virtual universe will quickly turn black or purple while the system loads.

The app mimics the real world by creating an avatar walking or taking public transport. Video games often display maps or provide other features that allow users to quickly jump to other parts of the virtual game space.

Baidu’s metaverse concept on XiRang begins with a “Creative City” with a tall skyscraper at its center, according to this image shared with reporters on December 21, 2021.

Baidu

While the general discussion attracted public attention, Chinese state media published several articles on the topic, often about the risk of fraud.

On Thursday, the Chinese government’s central disciplinary committee published an article on its website on the global history of the metaverse. Piece also warning of the risk of unwarranted metaverse hype of some companies and the need for financial supervision in the virtual world.

Virtual land has become an area of ​​speculation in the nascent metaverse.

But Baidu’s XiRang app will not support digital currencies or asset trading like speculation in virtual assets, even though it uses the same underlying technologies as blockchain, Ma said.

He is not the only voice of moderation.

A full metaverse would take five to 10 years of development, said Alvin Graylin, China president of HTC, a smartphone and virtual reality company. about Baidu. “For products and services that include Metaverse, parts of them will arrive much sooner.”

“The main challenge to achieving the full Metaverse ecosystem will likely not be about the specific technology or product, but about the underlying infrastructure, international regulatory agreements and global standards. ,” Graylin said in an email. “It will take a global joint effort between many companies and governments to deliver on the promise of Metaverse.”

He added that some of the elements the metaverse needs immediately include tax regulation and global coverage for high-speed cloud computing.

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