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.