Wen 丨 New Eyes, Author 丨 Ruan Xue, Editor 丨 Sang Mingqiang
At the time of the release of Xi'an, 53-year-old Robin Li joined his digital people to show Baidu's latest achievements to the outside world.
In stark contrast to Robin Li's upward exploration, Baidu has fallen behind over the years. Time back to 10 years ago, Baidu is still firmly in the top position on the Internet, but now, in terms of market capitalization alone, Baidu and BAT are several places behind: Tencent and Ali are 4.5 trillion Hong Kong dollars and 2.7 trillion Hong Kong dollars (US stocks 350 billion US dollars) respectively, and Baidu is around 440 billion Hong Kong dollars (US stocks 56 billion US dollars).
"Investing in Baidu is equivalent to investing in Robin Li", which is the tacit "Baidu law" of the investment circle.
Lin Jun, author of "The Internet: Fifteen Years of Boiling," divides the groups that drive the development of the Internet in China into three categories: returnees, geeks, and businessmen. Robin Li is one of the few entrepreneurs who can have 3 identities at the same time, returned to China with the technology of super chain analysis to found Baidu, and then relied on investment to expand Baidu's business territory, and in recent years has driven this big ship ALL IN AI.
If you want to judge the direction of Baidu, Robin Li is a touchpoint that can never be bypassed. The reason why the outside world has such a perception may be closely related to the changes in Baidu's organizational structure. Unlike the other two in BAT, Ma Yun has Cai Chongxin behind him, and Ma Huateng has Martin Lau to help, but Baidu seems to have only Robin Li, and the deputy's chair has changed hands many times.
From Wang Zhansheng, Xiang Hailong, Lu Qi to Wang Haifeng and Shen Shu today, Baidu executives have changed no less than ten times in the past 20 years, and some of them have been bound together by "Baidu's future confusion" and scattered due to some changes. From the initial portal, search engine, to the current web 3.0, meta-universe, Robin Li and Baidu witnessed countless outlets of the Chinese Internet, but failed to let Baidu go to the center of the storm, and the total opportunity passed by.
Half of the older generation of Internet tycoons have retired, leaving only Robin Li still standing for his own products in front of the stage. As for who is managing Baidu, this is a very good question, but also a few words can not be said clearly, if you want to answer this question, you may be able to glimpse one or two from those who leave Baidu.
Search, sell, rock
After serving for fourteen years, Xiang Hailong is one of the few veterans of Baidu.
Regarding his departure, Robin Li once said in an open letter, "It is necessary to carry out organizational capacity building and promote the rejuvenation of cadres." Xiang Hailong was also young, and the bidding ranking opened up a business solution for Baidu's search, and also let Xiang Hailong step into Baidu's door, at that time, he did not know what "sales orientation" would bring to this technology company.
In 2001, Xiang Hailong established Qilang Network in Shanghai and served as the general manager, and later, Shanghai Qilang became the general agent of Baidu bidding ranking in Shanghai, once the largest network marketing agency in Shanghai, and also the most powerful agent in Baidu's channel system. Four years later, Baidu acquired Shanghai Qilang, and Xiang Hailong officially joined Baidu with a team, and served as the general manager of Baidu Shanghai Branch, and later concurrently served as the general manager of Beijing Branch.
At that time, the second place Wang Zhansheng (CFO) had just completed Baidu's listing on the NASDAQ, and on the day of the IPO, Baidu's market value reached 4 billion US dollars. Since 2005, baidu's highlight moment has grown dozens of times, and by the end of 2007, Baidu's market value exceeded $13 billion, becoming the first Chinese company to enter the NASDAQ's top 100 stocks.
Success in the capital markets has not prevented the change and loss of insiders. Liu Jianguo (CTO), who was in charge of the technology research and development of baidu search engines and played the world with Robin Li, left Baidu in 2006; Wang Zhansheng, who made great achievements, was accidentally killed in the winter of 2007, robin Li lost his most important partner, and at the other end, Xiang Hailong opened his career in Baidu's triple jump.
In 2007, Xiang Hailong served as the vice president of sales of Baidu, responsible for the national sales management of bidding rankings, including sales operations, direct sales management, channel management and enterprise marketing; in 2011, Xiang Hailong was transferred to Baidu's commercial operation system as vice president; in 2013, Baidu established a search business group, which brought the sales system, business operation system, web search department and product marketing department under Xiang Hailong.
In the ten years from 2007 to 2016, search and keyword advertising have always been the focus of Baidu's business, bringing huge profits to Baidu, once accounting for more than 90% of the revenue structure, responsible for the business xiang hailong, inwardly was named "sales minister", in the outside was called "Baidu god of wealth".
After that, although Baidu has been actively expanding its business territory, and even tried to let Tieba carry out social transformation to adapt to the transformation of the Internet from PC to mobile, the results are not optimistic. Although it has repeatedly adjusted its product service strategy, successively exerted efforts on mobile terminals, O2O services, information flow advertising, etc., and also made diversified attempts in terms of product form and service depth, under the result of few wins and more defeats, Baidu only reduced the total revenue share of search business revenue from 93% to 78%.
"Making money lying on the merit book" was the main evaluation of Baidu's profit model by the outside world at that time.
Until caught in the "technology and goodness" controversy whirlpool, Baidu suddenly woke up to the moral hazard behind advertising and bidding rankings, and then, Baidu carried out rectification, announced that the proportion of controlled commercial promotion information did not exceed 30%, although Xiang Hailong was not greatly affected by the rectification storm, but the "god of wealth" also failed to save the search market encroached upon by personal portals: the rise of various mobile APP, so that Baidu search is no longer the only entrance to traffic.
A set of financial report data in 2019: Baidu's revenue in the first quarter was 24.1 billion yuan, which was significantly lower than market expectations, Baidu's stock price fell by more than 10% after hours, some analysts expected Baidu's network marketing to face challenges, and Baidu also announced a $1 billion stock repurchase plan. These numbers seem to be cruelly declaring that the search era of Baidu alone has passed.
In May of the same year, the senior vice president of the search business unit submitted his resignation to Hailong.
Transfer to ALLINAI
At that time, people compared Lu Qi's appointment to Baidu's martingale transformation method.
"Qin lost its deer, and the whole world chased it away." Robin Li once commented on Lu Qi's arrival to reporters. Looking back at Lu Qi's life, he stayed at Yahoo for 10 years, worked at Microsoft for 8 years, and when he announced his inauguration to Baidu, although it was during the period of internal personnel organizational changes in Baidu, a large number of senior executives left, but the outside world once believed that Lu Qi would become Baidu's "fixed sea god needle" and break the spell of "Baidu executives like flowing water".
At the beginning of 2017, Baidu officially appointed Lu Qi as the president and chief operating officer (COO) of Baidu Group, responsible for product, technology, sales and marketing operations, Lu Qi's arrival changed Baidu's reporting system at that time, and Robin Li had a real second-in-command: at that time, Baidu's existing business groups and responsible persons would report directly to Lu Qi, and Lu Qi would report directly to Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu Group.
Decentralization reform, Lu Qi put forward the "ALL IN AI" strategy on Baidu.
This allowed Baidu to once again face the public as a technology company after many years and revive its belief in technology. The first thing Lu Qi did when he took office was to lay off Baidu's medical division and reduce Baidu's business redundancy. Subsequently, Baidu released an internal email announcing the organizational optimization and management structure adjustment of Baidu Nuomi, and adjusted the future goal of Baidu Nuomi to promote the combination of service business and artificial intelligence. The story behind everyone also knows that Baidu Glutinous Rice was classified into iQiyi, which is regarded as a signal for Baidu to fully withdraw from the O2O market.
Baidu's commitment to AI is a dark line that has been buried before Lu Qi's arrival. On the road to explore the second growth curve, Baidu has many dark lines, which once made Baidu deeply confused, in the face of market value shrinkage, the outside world saw Baidu's fall behind, but Baidu is still wandering in the past and the future, and Lu Qi's arrival pushed the AI behind Baidu to the front of the stage, determining Baidu's course: consolidate the mobile foundation and win the AI era.
Transformation and personnel changes are often twin brothers.
The day after chief scientist Wu Enda announced his departure, Baidu immediately announced the integration of the ai technology platform system (AIG), which was responsible for Wang Haifeng, vice president of search business, at the same time, the Baidu Research Institute, which has been independent, was officially incorporated and became an integral part of the AI technology platform system (AIG), and the adjustment of the organizational structure released the signal of Baidu's turn to bet on AI to the outside world. It is worth mentioning that at that time, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. also proposed the strategy of "artificial intelligence first".
Lu Qi's future positioning for Baidu is not only to be a search engine company, but also an AI-based platform company. Therefore, in the "four quadrants" strategy he formulated, the past four major businesses of Baidu such as Baidu Tieba, knowledge, maps, and glutinous rice were divided into non-main channels, and Baidu Finance, Duos, intelligent driving, smart home, intelligent cloud, short video and AIG in exploration and incubation were put on the main channel, and mobile search was used as a moat to provide cash flow support for the above businesses.
Chart: Baidu's four-quadrant strategy (drawn by New Eyes)
Surprisingly, when Baidu's reform went to the deep water area, the deputy Lu Qi disembarked. During the 486-day voyage, Baidu's market value climbed from $60 billion to $98 billion, a stock price increase of nearly 60%, and when Lu Qi left, Baidu's stock price also fell.
Old ships, new people
Replacing Xiang Hailong and Lu Qi was a man younger than them all: Shen Shu.
Shen Ji has been moving towards the center of power since 2019, when Baidu's big ship has carried too many failed attempts and many new missions. Although Robin Li retains Lu Qi's All IN AI to a certain extent, he cannot give up the big disk of the mobile ecology, and for Shen Ji, how to balance the relationship between various businesses has become the primary task.
Interestingly, even if Baidu positions itself in Wikipedia as an AI company, in terms of revenue composition, Baidu's core business in 2019-2021 is still a combination of "search services and transaction services", and nearly 70% of the business composition comes from advertising and marketing. At the same time, the increasing cost of AI research and development is also testing Baidu's cash flow reserve ability at all times, and the pressure also falls on Shen's shoulders.
Compared with the fame of the first two, Shen Shu seemed to be much more silent.
Correspondingly, Baidu's mobile business has not been able to make too much splash at the market level. When short videos, live streaming sales, and social e-commerce gusts of hot air struck, Baidu failed to effectively cut in; when Web 3.0 and the meta-universe broke out, Baidu launched Xilang and Wonder, but the unstable experience was evaluated by users as "turning the first-mover advantage into a first-mover disadvantage". Looking at Baidu's past product failures, it seems that it is either too aggressive or slow.
Shen Ji has been trying to get Baidu to tell new stories, but not all of them are appealing.
In the past, Baidu was the "editor-in-chief" of the entire Internet, using the identity of the search engine traffic entrance to control information push. What users see depends largely on its push mechanism, but in the era of mobile Internet, the information islands formed by the respective prosperity of APP have divided the traffic that originally gathered in Baidu, and the recommendation algorithm has made the acquisition of information from people looking for information to information finding people, which is a subversive impact for Baidu.
This influence is projected on Shen Shu's body, and it becomes a user and service that hangs on the lips.
But when it really returns to the user use dimension, Baidu's huge original user base makes it difficult to detect the changes. An interesting fact is that ten years ago and now people who use Baidu, the experience is not much different, similar interface and search logic, when judging the search effect, the top advertising logo is still a source of user dissatisfaction.
In the years when Baidu is looking for direction, the Internet has already undergone earth-shaking changes, and now Baidu's second growth curve is more like a big gamble. The commercialization of AI and intelligent autonomous driving is far away, and there are too many uncertainties. For Baidu, some people lament that it has missed the outlet of the times again and again, and some people have tried to use the trend to deduce Baidu's life plate, but unfortunately, we can only see the current Baidu: an old ship that is wandering and turbulent, the difference is that the trembling interconnection has become a new ticket. No one knows the answer to how far it can go.