Today's announcement is no doubt a surprise attack.

Today's announcement is no doubt a surprise attack, just as everyone is speculating about the so-called "product release", MA, Charles Zhang, Wang Xiaoquan, the three-bit filed gave the present reporter a blow.

Sogou and Tencent contact began earlier this year, good confidential work plus anecdotal rumors, the public once thought Sogou and 360 of the cooperation is guaranteed. This time, unexpectedly, with Tencent, the question is: what causes the two sides to work together, and let Tencent so magnanimous to give up?

There are three reasons for this:

One, watch the dog team. Wang Xiaoquan in the search market has formed an oligopoly under the pattern of obstinately cut a market, which gave Ma himself a deep impression. As a then, it is an acceptable option to keep Sogou's independence and inject resources into it. On the other side, at least the impression of Zhang's 360 is that he intends to "crush" the dog to nourish the development of his business.

Second, the business is complementary. Sogou on the PC side has excellent search and browser, and Tencent's PC-side products in both of these are weak. On the flip side, Tencent does not do well on mobile browsers, and mobile search is the second in the country. The combination of both sides will increase the linkage between PC and mobile phone to promote market share. At the same time, in view of Tencent's dominance in social and IM, it is also well worth looking forward to the improved experience of Sogou input method.

Third, the common enemy. Ma said that search is a market with a large scale effect, and it is better to combine the traffic with the vicious competition than to make it bigger, which is good for both commercialization and user experience promotion. Sogou pc end, search in the mobile end of development faster, both sides will search the market will immediately form a three-point pattern of the world, and "can be expected to achieve a second position soon" (Ma Teng language). This is a recipe for Tencent to stop the 360 from becoming bigger.

In 360 of the Abacus, on the PC side of their own and Sogou's market share added up to nearly 30%, enough to form a direct threat to Baidu. But Tencent, the dog after hand to take 14% of the share, let 360 sit two look at one of the expectations. In Ma's view, a single search product without a browser, such as channel driven is more difficult to do, Tencent in the PC search market poor reason for this. And looking at the mobile side, Tencent's situation is much better: micro-letter and QQ can be integrated with search depth, search and Sogou merged with 16% of the market share and in the continued growth, which is enough to make 360 and Baidu on pins and needles.