Pattern of the Sleepy

Absrtact: In fact, the 3B war broke out not so suddenly, at least on different occasions, the three parties of Robin Li, Zhou (Weibo) and Wang Xiaoquan all predicted the war either clearly or implicitly. But at this point, the initiation in this way does make people somewhat

In fact, the "3B war" erupted not so suddenly, at least on different occasions, the three parties of Robin Li, Zhou (Weibo) and Wang Xiaoquan all predicted the war either clearly or implicitly. But at this point, it's a bit of a surprise to be launching this way.

Naturally, a week later the "Baidu World Congress" became a "storm eye." But Robin Li is sitting on the stage talking about cloud computing and mobile interconnection, seemingly deliberately avoiding any intersection with the war.

This is a normal thing in the business world. After Google quit China, Baidu almost "monopolized" the Internet industry to become the most powerful business areas. Look at its earnings, in 2012 Q2, Baidu's total revenue reached 5.456 billion yuan, an increase of 59.8%, and net profit has 2.77 billion yuan, an increase of 69.6%. This is faster than another "scary" company-Tencent, not to mention Google, its two numbers (revenue and net profit growth) than half of Baidu. And most importantly, Baidu is already the 40 billion dollar Big Mac company.

But Robin Li's "sense of crisis" and Baidu's proud accumulation of technology did not build it a solid wall, 360 looks easy to take down 10% of the market share. Baidu even looks a little overwhelmed, it could have been more comfortable to face this and its own not at all a level of opponents.

This may accelerate the change of Baidu, in fact, Baidu Technology Vice President Wang Jin has said enough to understand: "We no longer mention to search as the core, today Baidu is a platform, we provide the most perfect service for developers." ”

As for Baidu, the scariest enemy is not 360 of these entrants, whose market position needs to be changed to guide the industry as a whole. Social and mobile interconnection may subvert the so-called traditional search engine, because in these two ecosystems, the search instant becomes a "gear", it can no longer like the previous one through a search box to dominate the entire flow of data.

That's what Baidu is worried about, and why it's so heavy on cloud computing.

Pattern of the Sleepy

A simple consensus is that 360 has introduced enough traffic to its integrated search through browsers and navigation. This is actually a user's habit of victory, when Baidu can beat Google and Yahoo, is to win the user implanted a habit, "Baidu, you know." Many people in Google search box type Baidu, and then habitually to search, Baidu map ... Even Google can offer the same services.

360 The same is true, the 360 secure URL navigation can finally defeat hao123 is enough to explain the problem. Zhou to the user habits of the search is not better than the Robin Li, searching and browser is not supposed to be user stickiness is particularly large products, but he is using the natural translation of user habits, the original browser Google's traffic is very "quiet" to guide their own search engine.

Strictly speaking, this is not a triumph of business model, "browser + search" model is not absolutely more reasonable than the simple search engine, the example is that Google has tried to use the same tricks to rob Yandex (Russia's largest search engine Company) market share, and the effect is not very ideal.

But it still exposes the "soft rib" of Baidu. Yes, Baidu is China's largest search engine, but it has never been a "platform" impression, it has been just a "search". In other words, because the search in the content distribution has a great advantage, but in the user's control (also can be said to be user stickiness) on, but very weak, Baidu's share more from a habit, rather than users like landing micro-blog, the initiative to stick.

This result is even a bit embarrassing, Baidu such a can about China's Internet traffic to the company, the user base is poor.

And the trend is becoming more pronounced in the social and mobile Internet eras. The premise of the Baidu model is that dispersed users look for the same dispersed information, but after the advent of social platforms like Weibo, the way users get information begins to change. The information also begins to converge and is not reasonably crawled by search engines. More importantly, this user-viscous business model is tying users and traffic to themselves.

The same is true of mobile Internet. With the rise of a variety of intelligent terminal applications, app has already skipped the search engine for the user's traffic, as the 2010 Wired magazine published an article entitled "The web has died forever." Even the existence of the browser is questioned, then what should Baidu do?

This is why Baidu has so clearly supported the Web app, which in its view has many drawbacks in today's APP market: fragmentation, messy desktop management, high power consumption and dispersion through distribution channels, and in 2014, browser-based Web apps will rise.

Therefore, the cloud service that Robin Li speaks of is more valuable. Through the back-end of the cloud and front-end browsers, Baidu can not only stick to the user, and all the previous business model can be very reasonable.

Baidu needs to change, not too dependent on search, or traditional search methods. If you want to keep the traffic entry position, the business model should be sexier.

Social difficulties

A small story is often used to support the social impact on the internet and even life: a Japanese forgot to take toilet paper, he unconsciously sent a Twitter, the result is really someone to give him the papers. But what happens if he searches Google for "what to do with the toilet without paper"?

In "The future is wet," Clay believes that historically people have spent too much time solving technical problems, not the social problems of technology users, and that the Internet is becoming more alive and more humane, and it will be a tool to break the limits of traditional organizations.

Traditional internet companies are so wary of Facebook, not because it refuses to crawl its information, but because it keeps telling users: "Hey, you've had a lousy life before." "Zuckerberg is adamant that social networks can replace search engines later," which means that networks can be a series of meaningful connections to individuals. ”

The same thing that they preach repeatedly is the case of a Michigan wedding photographer. He pushed his advertising to "24-30-year-old", Facebook's "engaged" "female" user, and in 12 months he earned 40,000 dollars, but only spent 600 dollars on advertising. Facebook is trying to grab instant messages that search engines simply can't control, such as posting a "I want to buy a pair of sunglasses" on your personal homepage, and you'll see some of the names of businesses selling sunglasses in a jiffy.

This information is often more valuable, but harder to crawl because its magnitude is likely to be several times the number of traffic on the search engine and more fragmented.

Even so, it is almost certain that social networking cannot replace search because search engines are evolving as well. "Our strategy and plan is to integrate social elements into core products rather than developing a social networking site alone," Mr. Li told Wall Street investors about the social-era Baidu. ”

There have been media reports that Robin Li has been very concerned about the community for a period of time, he is very clear that this is the weakness of Baidu. Although Baidu early in 2003 and 2005 on the online Baidu Bar and Baidu know, and these two products are also very successful. But they tend to list information in terms of the organization of the topic, which is far less interactive than Weibo.

In the micro-blog after the online not long, Baidu said it will be online, but not long after it is offline. At that time, many media in the evaluation of the matter, all believe that Baidu has not found a social feeling, and in the field of non-search too little investment.

Baidu at that time to implement the "721" big search strategy, that is, 70% of the resources input and search directly related to product and technology research and development, will be 20% of resources input and search indirect related products and technology research and Development, 10% of the resources into other innovative project research. such as E-commerce, IM, overseas development and so are "new business." "Diversification has never been the pursuit of Baidu," Baidu CFO Jennifer once said, "with 10% of the resources to do a try may be a waste, but do not try, Baidu has become a traditional industry, there is no new things to ponder." ”

Therefore, it is difficult to blame the failure of Baidu to product problems, perhaps more because Baidu is not very clear product system.

The same goes for Google. In fact, Google's social layout is very targeted, in 2010, it has acquired a social search engine aardvark, which makes the results of Google's search results sometimes flow from the social network.

But there are many examples of failure. Launched in May 2009, Google Wave is a fusion of IM and social networking site products, the first August 2 was sentenced to a "reprieve"; Google Buzz is not good anywhere, but also just after 1.5, the end of "life."

Google has placed more hope on Google +, but its performance remains bland. Foreign media in the evaluation of this product, rather blunt use of "no feelings, the precise definition of digital containers," such words. As soon as it comes up, it imposes a circle of this kind of thing on the user, and any user relationship you have must belong at least in a particular circle.

The setting of the circle, in fact, is to focus on information, Google wants information to be more orderly, regular flow, to where it should go. So it's more about how information is distributed, not about the interaction of users like Facebook. The relationship on this platform is cold, and naturally it is impossible to appear like poke (poke him).

How should search engine and SNS combine? So far, there is no good way to do that. For search engines, the world is not always rational, orderly, regular, standardized, structured, and people do not always need accurate control, it needs to logically understand the "sales flow" and "sales person" between the difference.

Platform Trap

But it still does not stop Baidu on the platform of Exploration. Li thought clearly one thing, in this March's Baidu developer conference, he once said that the past belongs to the webmaster, and the future belongs to the mobile developers.

Google has long been prescient, it has captured the client through Android, but also has a large developer community, and the original has a huge number of user base maps, mailboxes, cloud storage unprecedented

Apps quickly "tied" users to Google.

Baidu at this time also need to build their own ecological chain, this is no longer a piling up the era of products. So, in the logic of Baidu, Cloud becomes the most important dimension.

"We used to be around the existing products to do the wireless, but now is the Baidu Cloud as the center, to the developer needs and open platform as a means, the way has changed." "Baidu Mobile Cloud Division general manager Mingyuan (Micro Bo) said. Since the beginning of this year Baidu Wireless merged into Baidu Mobile cloud division, Baidu has in fact quietly reduce the "cloud" unrelated products.

Baidu is willing to go backstage, which is as a platform for the operator of the minimum criteria, it even needs like Amazon (Weibo) for the entire ecological chain to build a more complete infrastructure. Around the cloud, Baidu is building the face of developers of the 4 systems, respectively, is the development of support, operational support, channel promotion, business transformation.

Among them, the channel promotion based on Baidu's advertising alliance, the commercial change is similar with it, go is still flow to add mobile search promotion mode, these two points is the good at Baidu. In the development support and operation support, because of the particularity of mobile interconnection, Baidu needs greater investment. In the development support level, Baidu provides Baidu personal cloud storage, LBS, Baidu Cloud Input method and other basic applications; At the operational support level, Baidu has started providing data statistics services for mobile clients and Web apps to developers.

Li said: "In the past 12 years, Baidu's technology has been used in the Baidu search engine this application, we now start packaging, gradually open up, to provide developers with a wide range of applications, provide development funds, provide promotional channels." ”

And Baidu after the line of a series of products to make the whole process look very "stupid." For example, runtime, Baidu will be a variety of functions packaged into a library, so that developers can directly invoke, eliminating the cost of development links and reduce the threshold; BAE (Baidu Application Engine) provides a complete set of application development, maintenance and management platform; MTC Cloud testing allows developers to test their applications in a simulated mobile terminal environment without having to buy a variety of handsets to fit ...

They're even on the line. A product called "Site2app" can be a standardized way to translate the site directly into mobile applications, but also according to the nature of the site different, choose different presentation methods. This makes originally gathered in Baidu small webmaster, can instantly move their content to mobile internet.

Google is also so, the Greater China region and the South Korean Advertising Federation director Wang now do a lot of things are not done before. She needs to cover the entire lifecycle of a site, "the first is to teach them how to adapt to Android, and if they don't have apps on iOS and WP, we encourage them to do it, and then we teach them how to play foreign markets after the product is done, and when they have a direct sales team, , we'll also tell them how to do revenue management. ”

The "retreat" of search engine makes the fragmentation of the mobile internet era be solved preliminarily. Compared to web-age sites, the app's lifecycle is shorter and its value is more fragmented. such as Baidu, the scale of the company, their own direct sales team and dealers at all levels, the number should exceed 20,000 people, also just can service these hundreds of thousands of sites. And the number of apps is billions, search engines must standardize the process to make the entire eco-chain have the least energy.

The search engine is making itself platform to win more initiative, and in the whole ecosystem, it should be in what kind of role, it is still difficult to determine. But, to be sure, it wants to be a gateway to traffic, which is critical to the business model it relies on.

And the challenge is still space dies, for those webmaster needs, Baidu familiar in the chest, but it is now facing tens of thousands of users and developers, Baidu needs to stand in their perspective to think about the problem, this is not what it is good at.