The founder of Baidu Robin Li published his RankDex paper in 1997, a year before Larry Page's PageRank in 1998. And Larry was clearly aware of RankDex when he founded Google.

Here's what Wikipedia says in its PageRank entry:

>A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.[16] The technology in RankDex would be patented by 1999[17] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[18][19] Li's work would be referenced by some of Larry Page's U.S. patents for his Google search methods.[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#cite_ref-20

I don't think Google is a Baidu clone but in the cavalier way that people accuse other people of copying the timeline only supports Larry copying Robin Li.

They didn't. Google predates Baidu by two years. It's possible they could be talking about a specific technology, but not likely. Google had a Chinese subsidiary at one point in time, but stopped bothering as the government got in their way and assisted Baidu at every turn. Like with most situations where a foreign company competes with a Chinese one.

And that's before you get into the fact that China really doesn't want any foreign info-based companies operating in its borders, given their heavy propaganda machine. They'll tolerate it only until they can clone it and expel it.