Author 丨 Willow
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
On December 24, MEG Baidu's mobile ecological business group was recently exposed to layoffs and adjustments. According to the "Deep Net", Baidu's adjustment involves some employees in the meG mobile ecological business group such as games, live broadcasting, education, and mini programs, but the business departments involving commercialization are not among them.
In this regard, Baidu officials have not responded.
The interface quoted insiders as saying that there were layoff adjustments in the game department, involving employees receiving HR interview notices today. A Baidu employee described it on social media that "The game department of Baidu MEG was basically wiped out", and the department employed 300 people. An MEG school admissions said that he had just completed the new staff training last week, and on the 22nd, he was notified that the entire business line would stop recruiting.
Within Baidu, the MEG Mobile Ecosystem Business Group is one of the most important business departments, which is an important bearer of Baidu's past mobile ecological layout and pursuit of commercialization, and is Baidu's core source of income. In the past, many of Baidu's structural and strategic adjustments also came from this business group.
The Baidu MEG Mobile Ecosystem Business Group includes business groups with key businesses such as Baidu App, Intelligent Mini Program, Baijia Number, Baidu Live Broadcast, Good Looking Video, Baidu Health, and Knowledge Vertical Category.
At present, MEG is under the responsibility of Shen Ji, executive vice president of Baidu Group. Previously, in February 2019, in order to improve collaborative efficiency and stimulate organizational innovation, Baidu made cadre rotation adjustments to the three vice presidents at the time, Shen Ji, Wu Haifeng, and Zheng Zibin, and Shen Ji was fully responsible for searching the company's user products; in the 3 months after that, the search company once again strategically transformed into a mobile ecological business group, and Shen Ji was promoted to senior vice president, provoking the "beam" of the mobile ecology.
In April this year, Baidu Mobile Ecology proposed a strategy of "creating a service-oriented and personalized ecology", horizontally expanding the scale of users, vertically deepening the vertical industry category, of which live broadcasting, short video, education, etc. are key businesses, and also making efforts to increase the activity of Baidu App.
In the process of search to service extension, Mini Programs are important connectors, such as WeChat and Alipay. For the importance of mini programs to Baidu, it has been said internally that if the mini programs cannot be done, they will not do a summit (referring to the Baidu Alliance Summit, which is an important meeting of Baidu every year).
But now, several of the above businesses are among the adjustments.
As early as when Shen Ji took over MEG in an all-round way, he mentioned internally that new products were loss-making at the beginning, and the final assessment was not to look at one or two quarters, but to look at three years and five years, or even longer cycles. If the money is worth spending, losses are acceptable.
But as far as the results are concerned, perhaps the adjustment is still ongoing. According to Baidu's latest third quarter 2021 financial report, Baidu's revenue in the quarter was 31.92 billion yuan, an increase of 13% year-on-year; Baidu's net profit was 5.09 billion yuan, down 63% year-on-year; Baidu's core revenue was 24.7 billion yuan, an increase of 15% year-on-year. Although revenue and Baidu's core revenue increased year-on-year, they both declined sequentially.
Baidu's current correction may also stem from the drag on investment losses on Kuaishou. Last quarter, Baidu caused a huge loss as a result of its former investment in Kuaishou. According to the Q2 financial report, Baidu's other net losses totaled RMB2.4 billion, including a loss of RMB3.1 billion in fair value for long-term investments, mainly due to the continuous decline in Kuaishou's stock price in Hong Kong and the shrinking market value.
In addition, iQiyi was reported to be undergoing a 20% to 40% reduction adjustment. At iQIYI's 2021 third quarter report analyst conference, Gong Yu, founder, director and CEO of iQIYI, released the signal that non-core business units may face optimization. "For iQIYI, the focus is on open source and throttling, mainly cutting off inefficient businesses and projects, and increasing and trying new monetization opportunities."
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