The forefront | Baidu Shendun: not only to "interconnect" traffic, but also to "interconnect" technology and ecology

Text | Pu Shiyu

Edit | Su Jianxun

On December 16, the 2021 Baidu Alliance Summit was held. At the meeting, Shen Ji, executive vice president of Baidu Group, said: Baidu fully supports interconnection and has been fully open to partners at the three levels of infrastructure, technical capabilities and service ecology. Chen Yifan, general manager of Baidu Alliance, released the "superconductivity plan" at the meeting: Baidu is deeply interconnected with a number of head mobile phone manufacturers, and Baidu smart mini programs will be able to run cross-platform in the self-contained browsers of these mobile phones.

China's Internet has developed for more than ten years, and in the process of development, more and more fierce competition has made the Internet gradually move towards closure (such as some APP blocking external links). When platforms are not yet interconnected, developers often do a lot of repetitive work to ensure that applications operate across the platform. Taking Mini Programs as an example, a Mini Program developer developing Mini Program applications on the three platforms of WeChat, Alipay, and Baidu needs to increase the repetitive development workload by at least 200%. Not only is a lot of resources wasted in this process, but it also greatly affects the user experience.

At the meeting, Shen Jied stressed that true interconnection should not only be "interconnected" in traffic, but also "interconnected" in technology and ecology, so as to further release the dividends of scientific and technological innovation in the AI era.

Shen Ji, executive vice president of Baidu Group

Shen Jitter said that Baidu is currently promoting interconnection from three levels: infrastructure, technical capabilities and service ecology.

From the infrastructure level (that is, Mini Programs), at the 2018 Baidu World Congress, Baidu announced the official establishment of the Intelligent Mini Program Open Source Alliance, and more than 10 platforms such as iQiyi, bilibili, and Kuaishou became the first members of the Intelligent Mini Program Open Source Alliance. So far, 84 partners have joined the Intelligent Mini Program Alliance.

From the perspective of technical capabilities, Baidu Brain, as the core technology engine of Baidu AI, has provided 335 open capabilities to the outside world; the deep learning platform Baidu Fei Pulp has more than 4.06 million developers in various industries; at the same time, Baidu has also strategically invested in the open source community with 3 million members to open source China.

From the perspective of service ecology, Baidu has opened up a series of life service ecology and content ecology such as Baidu "Ask a Question", Baidu Health Ask Doctor, Baidu Health Medical Code, etc. to partners.

The superconductivity plan released this time is an important progress for Baidu to promote interconnection. At present, the built-in browsers of these mobile phone manufacturers can already support the operation of Baidu intelligent mini programs.

Chen Yifan also revealed that the "superconductivity plan" will open more operational cooperation resources to partners in the future, helping them to refine their operations and obtain user precipitation. In the future, Baidu Alliance will also upgrade products, technologies, platforms and other three aspects.

After the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a meeting in September this year to lead the removal of external link restrictions, Tencent, Ali, and ByteDance have expressed their support. The re-entry of the Internet to interconnection is not only the strategic layout of an enterprise, but also the only way for the construction of national information infrastructure. The removal of external link restrictions has taken the first step in interconnection, and how to seize the opportunity in reshaping the industry pattern is still a proposition worth pondering for Internet companies.