Baidu seems to have not been on the hot search for a long time, what is it doing? How long have you not used Baidu? Do you still use Baidu regularly? Today we will look for him in the crowd, talk about Baidu, talk about Robin Li.
The three giants of china's Internet, also known as the triple door: Baidu, Ali and Tencent, are known as BAT.
Today, Baidu seems to be left behind from the big three, and the ByteDance we know as ByteDance (its today's headlines, douyin, etc.) has become a rising star, and has comprehensively surpassed Baidu in terms of valuation, revenue, domestic and foreign influence, etc., replacing Baidu's "B" position in BAT. Looking at Baidu's total market value, it is very clear that Baidu's jianghu status is only a fraction of Ali Tencent.
From a technical point of view, Baidu is a great company.
Baidu's search technology is still the strongest, and it is not inferior to Google. In addition, Baidu began to develop artificial intelligence as early as 10 years ago. At present, Baidu's AI chip technology has been recognized internationally, and at this year's global chip top conference ISSCC 2021, Baidu Kunlun chip appeared on the "hot commercial chip release" link, showing Chinese chips on the world-class stage; its unmanned driving has also occupied a leading position in the list of the most demanding autonomous driving competitiveness in Europe and the United States for five consecutive years.
From an infrastructure perspective, Baidu is the first company to occupy the underlying traffic entrance.
It should be said that Baidu has incomparable superiority of other Internet companies, whether it is a company or an individual, it has been inseparable from it. At present, Baidu's search technology and AI technology integration also have an infrastructure-like status and have not wavered.
From the perspective of corporate culture, Baidu is a technology-driven company with founders as the core.
In this regard, similar to Xiaomi's Lei Jun and Gree's Dong Mingzhu, the leaders are basically the biggest stars of the enterprise. In fact, the founder's aura is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, if used well, the enterprise can condense the combat strength, the aura of the leader can also advertise for the endorsement of the enterprise, saving a large amount of advertising costs, and the effect is super good, Gree Dong Mingzhu is the representative of this trick to the extreme; on the other hand, if it is not used well, it will restrict the development of the enterprise, imprison the corporate culture, hinder the growth of the company, and even make the enterprise lose everything overnight. Unfortunately, I think Robin Lee is just such a character. Of course, I never deny Robin Lee's talent and ability, on the contrary, he is one of the big guys I admire. But his self-absorbed, rational, impersonal, and mercenary values are not very much recognized by me.
Link: You may not know anything about Robin Lee and his people I think that Robin Li is the most handsome, temperamental and gentle boss of all the Internet companies in China at present. His image, typical of the rich and handsome. Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Luo Yonghao, Lei Jun, etc., are far behind in their image. You know what? Li Yanhong, a native of Yangquan, Shanxi, and Liu Cixin, a science fiction writer, are fellow countrymen, and in their early years they were still studying in a school, all of whom were geniuses with higher IQ than ordinary people, plus Li Yanhong was smart and studious, and his life was like opening and hanging all the way. He graduated from Peking University and later became an elite in Silicon Valley. In 1996, Robin Li developed a technology - "super chain analysis technology", and applied for a patent, which has become an important basis for modern search engines, and he ranked at least among the top three in the world in terms of search technology. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Robin Li is one of the founders of modern internet search. It is said that in a corner of the archives of the headquarters of the United States Patent Office in Virginia, there are several pages of seemingly inconspicuous paper. But if you take it out for auction, these pages are incredible, probably more expensive than many antiques, and it must be in the hundreds of millions. Because what is recorded above is one of the most valuable technology patents in the world, that is, Robin Li's "super chain analysis technology". He is also very charismatic and always finds top talents to help him do things. The people who started the business with him were basically the god-level figures at that time, known as the "Baidu Seven Musketeers", such as: Yong Xu: Ph.D., Texas A&M University, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, is one of the founders of Baidu Yu Jun: Vice President of Baidu Products, one of the earliest search engine research and promoters in China, the core and leader of Baidu product design, known as the "father of Baidu Tieba". Lu Qi: Carnegie Mellon University, Ph.D. in Computer Science. Lu Qi joined Yahoo in 1998, was appointed senior vice president of Yahoo in 2006, executive vice president of Yahoo in 2007, joined Microsoft as executive vice president in 2008, left Microsoft in September 2016, joined Baidu in January 2017 as president and chief operating officer of Baidu Group, in February, was appointed as a director and vice chairman of baidu's board of directors, and since March he has also served as the general manager of Baidu's intelligent driving business group. There are also Li Mingyuan, Wang Zhansheng and so on. These people were the top people in the industry at that time. Most of them have left Baidu for various reasons, and they have all become a big bull, and they are still god-level figures. It is said that other Internet companies, the most welcome Baidu employees to leave, each is the elite of the elite.
I believe that Baidu's subsequent fall behind, declining reputation and loss of executives, Robin Li has an unshirkable responsibility.
Why?
It is said that in 2001, robin Li, in spite of the opposition of everyone else, the gentle and elegant man even threw up the table to scold the opponents and forcefully launched the evil bidding search ranking (the bidding ranking broke the relevance, authenticity and accuracy of the search, and the ranking and value of the search content was determined by the number of bids). From that moment on, this laid the groundwork for the decline in Baidu's reputation and the loss of talent.
1, bidding search has become an accomplice to false advertising
The most typical is the "Wei Zexi" incident (in 2016, 21-year-old Wei Zexi believed baidu medical advertisements and died tragically after being hollowed out by scammers. Before his death, Wei Zexi issued a long article on crying blood, accusing Baidu of evil, Baidu bidding ranking system and Putian Hospital were exposed to the public, notorious)
The image comes from the Internet
As long as this mechanism exists for one day, false advertising cannot really be eliminated. However, in Baidu's profits, advertising revenue still accounts for more than 60% of the share, which is the main reason why Baidu will not easily give up bidding rankings. The whole thing is a money printing machine.
In 2019, Baidu Elder Shi Youcai was arrested, why? Because under his leadership, Baidu Search is involved in illegal gambling advertising promotion. This shows that Baidu has never really paid attention to the problem of false advertising and has been repeatedly caught. The controversy over auction advertising has never stopped. If you search baidu in Zhihuli, there are many cases pointing to cases of Baidu false advertising pit people, and here are not examples.
Hong Bo, a well-known Internet commentator, once told Caijing that Baidu's mistake was not to give birth to a mature business ethic that matched its size and influence. The author believes that if Robin Li does not reflect on the contradiction between the "bidding mechanism" and business ethics for a day, Baidu will not be able to retain people for a day. In the case of many public relations crises, word of mouth and product experience, Robin Li did not admit that he was wrong, and never really reflected and corrected, resulting in a decline in performance and popularity.
Obviously, Robin Li never wanted to give up the printing machine of bidding and ranking, even if public opinion was in an uproar. In many meetings, even in public, he did not face up to the consequences of the evil of the bidding ranking, nor did he sincerely apologize, but repeatedly reiterated the freedom and fairness of the "bidding ranking" and advocated how good the bidding ranking was. Even after experiencing the "splashing watergate" and the incident of being smashed at the developer conference, it has not changed Robin Li. Guys, did you know? Google's search ranking mechanism is both popular and profitable. However, I don't understand why Director Li never reflects on and does not learn the good aspects of Google.
2, not enough focus, blossoming everywhere and not bearing fruit
Baidu under the leadership of Robin Li did not do a good job of "focusing strategy", but blindly cast a net everywhere. Neither did it do its own search engine, nor did it seize the outlet of the mobile Internet. You know, the search engine is the core and main business of Baidu. When Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010, Baidu not only did not seize the opportunity to better polish the product, but lost its sense of crisis and continued to bet on the bidding ranking and did not innovate. In addition, there is no follow-up to the development trend of the Internet, the rise of smart phones in 2011, Baidu failed to predict the rapid arrival of the mobile Internet, one step slow, then step slow. Looking at the success of Tencent, Ali, Meituan, Kuaishou, and Douyin later, Baidu has always been a follower and hindsight, in addition to the acquisition of iQiyi is still relatively successful, almost in social, e-commerce, group buying and content and other aspects have not been successful.
On the contrary, later his main business, search, frequent accidents, word of mouth fell to the bottom.
Just imagine, if Baidu is like Gree, focusing on the search engine it is good at, balancing the revenue and product experience, so that users can quickly find the information they want, do not for money, bottomless advertising implants, then in the era of mobile Internet, naturally everyone will also be willing to use Baidu. In addition, as a basic platform, if Baidu can generously show users the content of competitors' web pages, plus good word of mouth, later Taobao, WeChat, etc., do not necessarily have to build their own traffic ecology, respectively, become information islands.
Baidu's product experience is not good, which prompts competitors to go their own way and build their own traffic ecology. Baidu has worsened the rules that the entire Internet should be interconnected, so that now the major Internet giants monopolize their own traffic and do not communicate with each other, prompting the relevant parts of the state to intervene in rectification. It can be said that Baidu is a good hand to play poorly. As a decision-maker, Robin Li's responsibility cannot be shirked. This has also caused conflicts with the values of many executive leaders, which is an important reason for their departures.
How can such strategic mistakes and corporate culture win people's hearts?
Is Baidu really hopeless? I don't think so.
On the contrary, I think Baidu has now been reborn.
Therefore, the title of my article today is "New Baidu", which is cut with the original Baidu.
In 2017, Baidu Tiancheng "Macho Man", a man named Lu Qi, joined Baidu, and this person had made a brief introduction before. He has a very deep experience in the Internet industry. After he became the CEO and CEO of Baidu, he immediately carried out drastic reforms to Baidu, re-established Baidu's strategic direction based on AI technology, and cleaned up the business that had no value. A year later, Baidu's stock price returned to the peak of nearly 100 billion US dollars. However, only 486 days later, Lu Qi also left Baidu for unknown reasons. Soon Baidu's stock price fell sharply, reaching a 2019 bottom of more than $40 billion.
Fortunately, the later Baidu adhered to the strategic direction "All in AI" formulated by Lu Qi (fully engaged in artificial intelligence). After the rebirth, Baidu has bet on the new business of AI (artificial intelligence) in non-advertising business (autonomous driving technology and intelligent cloud ecology). As a result, Robin Li bet on the right bet this time. In 2021, Baidu took the opportunity to return to Hong Kong stocks, coupled with joining the track of new energy vehicles, and the valuation returned to 100 billion US dollars.
According to the financial report released by Baidu, Baidu is still very profitable, and its performance is still growing. In the second quarter of 2021, Baidu's total revenue was 31.4 billion yuan and net profit was 5.4 billion yuan, of which online marketing revenue was 19 billion yuan, non-online marketing revenue was 5 billion yuan, and iQiyi's revenue was 7.6 billion yuan.
At present, Baidu's AI chip technology has been recognized internationally, and driverless driving has occupied a leading position in the list of the most demanding autonomous driving competitiveness in Europe and the United States for five consecutive years. In 2020, the cumulative number of AI patents in China was 2682, which was also the largest. Domestic autonomous driving licenses have also obtained more than 300 licenses, far more than other domestic car companies. At the application level, Baidu has also signed cooperation agreements with most first-tier cities in China to deploy smart transportation, smart driving, etc., and regionalized commercialization, obtaining tens of millions of kilometers of automatic driving data, which is really powerful in technology. According to the future plan, Baidu's automatic driving is likely to replace Didi in the future and fully launch the shared unmanned taxi model. In the field of automatic driving and new energy vehicles, Baidu does have too much room for imagination.
It is also very important that in 2021, Baidu has re-improved the mechanism of bidding ranking and strengthened the supervision of advertising.
1. Advertising form, information flow. How to say it? It is to insert ads in the natural results of the search: one is that the form of the advertisement is very similar to the natural search, and it has become the form of soft advertising; the second is that the advertisement is interspersed in the natural search results, and it is not concentrated on the home page as before, which enhances the search experience.
2. Implement hosting of advertising pages in some industries with many false advertisements and high sensitivity. The websites built by these industries themselves cannot be promoted, and they must make web pages according to the templates provided by Baidu to strengthen supervision. In this way, it not only enhances the experience, but also eliminates the risk of false advertising to a certain extent, which is convenient for control.
For these two changes, it is necessary to give Baidu a thumbs up, and Baidu has finally made efforts and attempts to enhance user experience and advertising supervision.
Baidu's future prospects are still promising, as long as it abides by the moral bottom line and business ethics, gradually reduces the revenue of advertising business, maintains more than 18% of investment in scientific and technological research and development, and deeply cultivates new AI business areas. I believe that in the near future, Baidu will be reborn, return to the peak, and return to the BAT camp.