3B Wars lead to doubt

Absrtact: One is the search engine market monopoly of the giant, a controversial intruder, the search engine around the 3B war into the second round: fishing. A few days ago, Baidu engineers released ghosts and ghost Fishing strategy, the controversy led to

One is the search engine market monopoly of the Giants, a controversial intruder, the search engine of the "3B War" into the second round: fishing.

A few days ago, Baidu engineers released the "Ghost Festival to Catch Ghosts" fishing strategy, the controversy led to the security of privacy as the 360. The problem is on a protocol called a robots. 360 is accused of non-compliance with the protocol, directly with the browser to crawl user browsing information, may cause user information leakage. "3B war" rivals Baidu and other Internet companies issued a request for employees to uninstall 360 browser call, Sogou CEO Wang Xiaoquan also said should abide by the robot agreement, fear 360 in security as referee and do players.

CNNIC's latest statistics show that 360 of Chinese internet users have fallen from 13.04% last week to 11.61%, with coverage falling from 34.2 million to 30.52 million, nearly a week and losing users to 3.68 million.

The second round of the 3B War ended in a dispute over the browser's direct collection of web information. "Daily economic News" in the survey found that the robots protocol by the browser developers as "Google's own protocol specification", "even the industry norms are not", search engine on the definition of user privacy, is still blank.

Baidu is not the original type to catch "ghost"

August 31, a Baidu engineer released by the micro-blog sparked the industry's extensive discussion.

Baidu's Internet data research and development manager named Zhao Minghua said that Baidu's engineers made several special pages without any chain, because search engine crawler only through the link crawling Web page, so this page is completely closed "island", it is impossible to be crawled by search engines. But surprisingly, Baidu engineers try to enter the above keywords in the 360 search results, this page impressively appears in the first line of search results, and can directly click to visit the content of the Web page. But then change Baidu, Google (Weibo), Sogou, search and other browsers searching the same content, but can not return the corresponding Web page.

Why a completely closed web page can be crawled by 360 search engines? Zhao Minghua's explanation was that he had opened the page in 360 browsers. In the 360 browser privacy policy, it is noted that 360 secure browsers record useful information about browsing history on the user's computer.

Baidu believes that the Baidu fishing process revealed 360 search security risks: As long as the user through 360 browser access to a Web page, whether it is a private account information, or the company intranet confidential data, will be 360 browser records, and was 360 search crawler crawl, upload to 360 server.

But 360 has its own story. 360 on the official microblog, Baidu said the so-called "island" data to smear 360 of the disclosure of user privacy. In fact, Baidu's practice is very simple, as long as the external link to guide 360 crawler crawl page, while shielding other search engines, and then cut off the chain, you can create only 360 of the so-called "island" illusion.

September 2, 360 chairman Zhou (Weibo) responded, "This is the misuse of the robots protocol, blocking 360 into the search market." ”

Baidu "Ghost Festival grasping Ghost" behavior, in the Internet industry is not the first. In early 2011, Google had taken this approach because it suspected Bing of its search results.

In October 2010, Google noted that Bing's search results were increasingly coinciding with Google, and that the same trend was getting higher, as Bing copied their search results.

To test speculation, Google conducted a fishing operation last December. They selected 100 unusual baits for a manual search ranking, which points the search results of these keywords to unrelated pages. At that time about 20 Google engineers on the computer using IE browser to search for these keywords, and then through IE search the bait on Google, luring Bing to the bait. Two weeks later, Google engineers searched through Bing to search for the bait, and the results were embedded in Bing's results, and it was found that Bing collects users ' privacy data through IE, and directly records uploaded user access URLs and then puts them into search results.

Game of search engine and commercial website

Zhao Minghua said that 360 bypassed the protocol, using browsers to record and upload user data and Internet behavior, and to form their own web site, and then use camouflage and hidden reptiles to grab snapshots and generate search results.

So is it legitimate to collect web information directly from the browser side?

In fact, the protocol is not mandatory, but after the birth of the search engine, the internet industry after a long game, and ultimately in search engines and commercial sites, the public right to know and user privacy to achieve a compromise between.

According to the daily economic news, the early internet was primarily a "user-site" model. The user obtains the information through the website, the website by attracts the user clicks to realize the advertisement income. However, when Google turned the search engine into a successful business model, many of the original business model of the site has been seriously damaged.

In order to safeguard their own interests, some large web sites in Europe and the United States to negotiate with Google, asking Google to "do something for nothing", so there is a robots agreement. The core idea of the protocol is to ask the robots program not to retrieve the content that the stationmaster does not want to be searched directly, and the concrete method of restricting the robots program into the format code, becomes the protocol of the robots. Generally speaking, the website is through the Robots.txt file to implement the robots protocol.

The most typical case of domestic use of the robots protocol is Taobao's refusal to search for Baidu. In addition, a large number of user registration, mail and other information, are using the robots protocol to prevent these content on the internet to be searched.

However, the vast majority of small and medium-sized sites need to rely on search engines to increase traffic, so usually does not exclude search engines, and rarely use the robots protocol. Last year, Jingdong Mall shielding a Amoy net crawl data, has accused a Amoy network destroyed the robots agreement.

Technical engineer Joey, in an interview with the Daily Economic news, said Google, Baidu is through their own servers are constantly on the Internet to capture content index, and 360 of the model is to let each use 360 browser computer to become 360 spider Crawler, the browsing content uploaded to the 360 server index.

The robots agreement binding geometry?

Previously, in many "Internet wars", 360 of the privacy issues were the focus of the competition's competitors.

Two years ago, Qihoo 360 company two network engineers use 360 company system to collect user information, through 360 server cloud computing backstage cracked the municipal card system background password, and remote for their own and 3 colleagues of a malicious card recharge 2600 yuan. January 2011, 360 collected privacy data by Google Crawler Crawl, the results include Internet users in Baidu search keywords, taobao shopping records, Kingdee and other corporate internal financial network data, such as the link data "naked" on the internet.

For the industry's query, 360 think pure Baidu "slander". 360, the site backstage, orders and other sensitive data in every search engine exists. Baidu by artificially set phishing Web page to slander 360 upload user data, the purpose is to prevent 360 into the search field, to maintain its market position.

However, many neutral industry observers believe that the focus of the event is not a war of words, but whether the "industry self-discipline" of the deal requires stronger legal constraints?

Bo, a senior Internet watcher, points out that the search engine ignores the robots protocol and grabs unauthorized information directly, which can cause industry chaos if it cannot be stopped in time by law and regulation. ”

In view of the domestic like 360 and Sogou so that both browsers and search companies are relatively few, can be compared with the same search engine and do browser giants: Google.

A browser technician told the daily economic news that Google's Chrome browser would also give "most visited sites" on the home page based on the history of the user's visit, but would not first appear in the search results.

In fact, when the "3B War" entered the second round, the attitude of the domestic Internet boss has changed.

Sogou CEO Wang Xiaoquan said, welcome 360 do search, the industry more open, give netizens more choice. And before this, Wang Xiaoquan to "3B war" attitude is "attack Baidu Guard 360".

At present, the awkward is that the robots agreement did not rise to a certain height. There have been news that the relevant government departments have been looking for Baidu, 360, Sogou to understand the progress of the parties, hoping to mediate, and prevent the whole event escalation. From the current situation, the relevant departments are conducting a study of 360 violations of the protocol.

"The so-called robots agreement, in fact, is Google's own development of a protocol specification, not the major search manufacturers consensus or unified agreement, and has never been a domestic search engine provider publicly committed to comply with the Protocol or signed a similar agreement or statement." "So, the protocol is not even an industry standard, let alone international standards, even in the United States, only Google to take it seriously." said the browser technician who did not want to be named.

"Cloud" and "End" contest

The search giant Baidu, the flagship cloud concept, has a deep sense of engagement with 360 of clients ' weapons.

In fact, Baidu has made the current search market position, a very important reason is that it has been in the layout of Chinese content platform, including knowledge, encyclopedia, bar and so on. Baidu's "moat" in the "cloud", is essentially a media, its strategic thinking is not only to provide a simple search, but from a classification, collation of the search engine to provide, organize the content of the platform.

"In the simple search technology to improve the prospects of limited, the premise of providing a large number of content so that Baidu has a huge user stickiness and traffic sources." Even with Google search, home results There are a large number of Baidu know, Baidu Encyclopedia and Baidu Bar content. "Cao Yuping said.

In fact, as early as 2009, Li said, Baidu is not a search engine, but the first Chinese media platform. And at just the end of Baidu's annual World Congress, Li first put cloud storage, large data intelligence, cloud computing three core cloud ability to open up.

In Cao Yue's view, the advantage of exerting its force in the cloud is that the large amount of content and user data obtained directly from it have built a "moat" to the successor. But Baidu for many years in the client sector has been a lack of influential products, this is exactly the 360 opportunity to attack Baidu.

By contrast, 360 of the competitive advantage is entirely "end-to-end"-the market is occupied by browsers and security guards.

"360 of the end mode, compared to the cloud model of Baidu, in the industrial chain in the downstream." "Cao Yuping points out that 360 of the risk is that once you come out with a more viscous client, such as WINDOWS8, if you have built-in security software, then 360 is dangerous.

In the newly entered search field, 360 of the share is falling rapidly. CNNIC The latest statistics show that August 27 ~9 month 2nd, the proportion of 360 Chinese internet users has dropped from 13.04% last week to 11.61%, covering the number of people from 34.2 million to 30.52 million, the user reduced by 3.68 million. Regardless of user coverage, search times and PV accounted for, 360 search is far below the Sogou, search and so on. At the same time, the data showed that 360 search users and PV values only 2.22% and 1.47%, significantly lower than other search engines, indicating that the use of 360 users to search the frequency and depth are very low.