Google quit Sogou first to challenge Baidu

Google quit, breaking the Chinese search industry for 4 years of Baidu and Google two strong hegemony pattern, become only Baidu a super player's game. In China's search market, where the total size of tens of billions of dollars is still growing by an annual growth rate of 40%, Google's historical opportunity to exit has made the second-tier search engine a guide.

Who has the ability to challenge Baidu? After several years of shuffling, Yahoo, search and other small and medium-sized players have withdrawn, and life, tourism, shopping, and other vertical search areas of the company is far from as people expect to grow up, qualified to launch the challenge to Baidu only Sogou, search and Youdao and a few players.

Who is challenging Baidu

According to the consultation on the 2009 Search market survey, Baidu to 69.9% of the market share ahead, Google's market share of 19.8%, and Sogou, search and Youdao are respectively 3.5%, 3.3% and 0.5% people live thereafter. Luebbe, president and chief analyst at Wang's consulting, said Sogou, search and Youdao between, although there is a little gap in market share, but the manufacturers search engines are in the development of the initial stage of the scuffle, the current share does not determine who can ultimately win, but the future of Baidu's competitors will certainly be in these several companies between the generation.

In this search war, the first open force is Sohu. March 25, through the introduction of Sogou 5.0 version of the machine, Sohu Board chairman Charles Zhang announced that Sogou search will be full force this year, the goal is to Google's share of the mainland search engine market. "Search engine to Sohu entire portal platform, the Internet is so important, Sohu has not given up, after Google quit, Sohu will force search." Zhang said that the domestic user demand a lot, the market is very large, Baidu is not the only choice, from the user point of view, to participate in the competition for the manufacturer is not a family, so Sohu faced a fierce battle this year.

As Zhang said, this cake is not the one of Sohu Sogou. News show, Tencent has been located in Beijing Silver Branch building Tencent Beijing, near the "third pole" rented 3-storey office buildings, as a future search office location. At the beginning of the April, the company's joint CTO Xun Minghua told the "IT Manager World": in the search business in the past, Tencent's total investment was about 400 million ~5 billion, at present about 500 employees, the next 2-3 years plan to increase to 1000 people,

The search will be the most important of Tencent's future strategy. History has proved that in almost omnipotent "one-stop Life platform", like after the people of Tencent, as long as the focus on the field, almost all can occupy the top three of the market, before the Tencent network, online games have been done.

As the most rapid growth of the search engine for the last six months, the search has completed 25 independent products, 35 Tencent business Search, comprehensive layout of the web search, vertical search, community search, Tencent business search, wireless search, client products, the six major product lines. Recently, Tencent also launched a new "search more understand You" brand connotation, at the same time put forward the "personalized, community, intelligent, mobile" innovative search concept, Xun Minghua hope that the search can be pried open the rapid development of the search market, become the main force after the Google era.

In fact, with Sogou and search the High-profile comparison, NetEase Youdao like NetEase's character: Do more, say less. Since the launch of the official version in December 2007, NetEase Youdao with 1.5 of the time, to 2009 years will be the general search engine on all products to provide standardized services have been made out, to achieve a few competitors in almost the most complete product line. On this basis, the Youdao also launched a machine translation and shopping search two other domestic search engines have not been involved in the product. NetEase Senior Vice president and Youdao chief architect Zhou Feng told the IT manager world: After the completion of the standard search product preparation, this year in addition to spend more effort to use the product research and development, will carry out more market promotion, and expand sales channels of construction.

So far, the proper way has begun to bear fruit. Zhou Feng provided figures show that the first quarter of Youdao advertising volume than the same period last year more than 5 times times, March compared to February growth of 30%, huge investment in the rapid development of the company is expected.

The gap with Baidu

Search Engine field of competition, including technology, marketing and other aspects of the promotion, and whether it is Sogou, Youdao or search, and Baidu compared to all aspects of a huge gap.

Search technology algorithm, in any search engine is the core secret, in the crawl, analysis and presentation, such as the need for a long time data mining and accumulation, the majority of users search for the purpose, and constantly transform the algorithm. This is a long period of huge investment and accumulation process. Machines need to be based on the past user search behavior to judge the needs of users, so as to render a most concise search results, if the number of users can not reach a large enough size, these competitors in a short period of time is still difficult to close to the level of Baidu.

Among the challenger's, the introduction of the earliest Sogou is only 2004, more than Baidu has been late for nearly 5 years, in these years, Baidu has been full of technology accumulation and has been advancing, and 2006 launched the search and the end of 2007 launched the Youdao, the accumulation of its technology is less, They are still unable to challenge Baidu's leading position in search technology algorithms in the short term.

Technology, though important, is not the deciding factor. "Even if Google's technology is strong, but more than 4 years of development is still difficult to close to the level of Baidu, which means that in addition to technology, marketing and promotion is still the key to determine whether the search engine can attract users." Lubberg said that by promoting the use of user habits, the competition is difficult to move the threshold.

Baidu and Google's users are very different, most users of the use of Baidu will not use Google, while Baidu users know that Google's search is useful, in the need to search the time will still habitually type in the search bar Baidu. "Although some users have opinions about Baidu, the user's habit is not to change in the short term," Lubberg said, which is not only Google's pain, but also the pain of other competitors.

According to the survey of the consultation, the 2009 only Baidu and its Hao123 as the default homepage search for the extreme users to reach 31.3% and 12.7% respectively, which means that 44% of the search users only use a search engine Baidu, while using other search engines as the homepage, can almost ignore, It can be seen that Baidu's huge market advantage.

Fortunately, the challengers have portals, clients, mailboxes and other users of the large-scale business, is undoubtedly their most important means to increase the number of visits, the future of which search engine can be combined with other business more closely, who will have to challenge Baidu's larger capital.

How to break through the melee

Unlike other Internet businesses, search has become the most basic service on the Internet as a tool for consolidating information and other businesses. Today's Baidu, has been in search based on the construction of the community, instant communications, shopping and other businesses, and Tencent, Sohu and NetEase are on the basis of other business search to transform these businesses, in turn, as mentioned above, these users of the large scale of the business will also provide a momentum for the development of search.

Their advantages are: Tencent has China's most powerful QQ clients, portals, communities and other services, while Sohu has ranked the second home of the portal matrix, the market share of 80% Sogou input method and just launched the Sogou browser business, NetEase in addition to the portal also has a number of users to break through 300 million of free mailbox service.

Compared with the traditional search enterprises, the backs of these trees, who use well, who can lead.

Xun Minghua Introduction, the current search has been with Tencent Network and QQ client combined to form a complete search chain. It is reported that, as one of China's four internet portals, Tencent users to browse the resulting institutional data will be directly attached to the search for direct-zone products. For example, search and entertainment channel with the combination of people searching products, a person under the name can be opened a search box, will be presented with the characters associated with the picture. At present, this product only Tencent exclusive operation, next, they will use a lot of portal resources to integrate an innovative search products. In addition, Tencent vigorously develop the local portal, to do the local characteristics of service, which also provides an important platform for the personalized development of the search.

Although it is difficult to put forward a complete search concept from concept description to technology path, the search platform looks like a universal socket full of possibilities. On the one hand, there is a separate search box can be attached to the Internet portal and the QQ interface anywhere, on the other hand through the combination of QQ clients, but also through the real-time interaction of QQ information, to achieve the relationship between the search objects and interaction, so that the search became three-dimensional, thus breeding a geometric increase in the new application mode.

Search has Tencent's support, but Sohu Sogou input method, Sohu portal matrix, as well as NetEase mailbox can also burst out endless power. In addition to the powerful portal matrix can be used, Sogou input method installed capacity has reached 260 million. Sogou Input method and search engine technology, the natural combination of the search engine in the new words, hot words and thesaurus through, for the user to create a good experience, not only can attract new users, but also to enhance the search Sogou brand attractiveness, is sohu through the entrance to the strategic development of search tool. and Youdao search and NetEase mailbox combination, similar to google search and Gmail, the relationship between attracting users and advertising linkage of the value of the same huge.

The key to winning is this, which companies can better deploy, more closely combined with these resources for search, the resource advantage to play to the extreme, is the key to who can win.

New game Rules

In the Chinese market, Google and Baidu's competition has never been on the business level. The weak voice of foreign companies in China's internet industry and disregard for China's national conditions have caused Google to be unable to form a direct blow to Baidu throughout. From entering the Chinese market, Google has been plagued by a variety of "doors"--from February 2006 Google did not have access to ICP license to open the "Licensing door", "Map door", suspected of copying Sogou input method of the "Word Library door", "Kai-fu Lee Tax Door", CCTV burst the "false advertising door" and "pornographic door" and "copyright door" and so on, That's about 10 of what we know. In just over 4 years, Google has to deal with various crisis PR events, consuming Google a lot of energy.

In the Chinese Internet industry, there are established rules of the game. Even naked attacks and saliva battles are a means of attacking competitors. Now, these and Baidu under the same game under the rules of competitors, are very adept at the Chinese Internet competition, and have a strong network media platform, when their business development to large enough, the fierce competition has to let Baidu also nervous.

In addition, the original Google is more high-end fans users, and Baidu's users do not want to do more than a clear-cut, sogou, search and user groups constitute and Baidu basically consistent, and their understanding of users, business, marketing and promotion methods are similar, which will undoubtedly lead to more intense competition in the future.

In the search industry, the past is "Baidu more understand China", and now is "all understand China." "From the point of view of Baidu, Google this competitor is certainly good to deal with some, because we are Chinese companies to the Chinese people's thinking to do the Internet." "Charles Zhang believes that Baidu was also occupied a variety of days, geographical location, people and to get such a large market share, although Baidu's market position in the short term will not be too big change, but in the long term winner is not necessarily."