Baidu CEO Li Yanhong said in an internal letter on Tuesday that the shift will allow the company to develop such areas as voice search, automatic translation and driverless vehicles.

Li, who is a co-founder of Baidu, which runs China’s largest online search engine, also vowed to emphasize user experience over income and to set up a department to root out any behavior that might damage user experience.

“The department will have the final say to veto any behavior that is not in line with a good user experience,” Li said in the letter, which Baidu made public later on Tuesday. “Some of the measures we take may have a negative impact on the company’s income. But I believe it is the right thing to do.”

Analysts said the move is expected to dampen Baidu’s near-term profitability, which in turn would make it more challenging for the company’s new business initiative to gain momentum.

The vow to put users ahead of business performance came after a government investigation led to a demand that the search giant overhaul its paid listing system. The probe came after the death of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old college student, who underwent an experimental medical treatment that had been advertised among Baidu’s search results.

The Cyberspace Administration of China, which launched a joint investigation of Baidu with other authorities last week, said on Monday that the company had “influenced the impartiality and objectivity of its search results, making it easy to mislead users, and this must be immediately rectified.”

In response to the government’s demand, Baidu said on Monday that it will restrict the proportion of sponsored search results to 30 percent per web page and adopt a new listing system that does not fully depend on the…