Chapter 63 The newcomer Baidu

Baidu and Taobao, which were originally well watered, have become popular due to Baidu's high-profile announcement of entering the C2C market. On September 8, 2008, Taobao released an article titled "Taobao Consumer Protection Plan: Creating Personalized Services to Block Search Engines", which caused an uproar in the entire Internet industry. Who is the blocked search engine? Everyone's guess.On the same day, Taobao made it clear: completely block Baidu.Which also partly blocked Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Starting from the afternoon of September 8, when entering the product name in the Baidu search engine, relevant information from Taobao stores cannot be retrieved directly.According to Taobao, “The reason for blocking Baidu is that Baidu uses PPC to display search results, which conflicts with the transaction credit system we have cultivated through years of accumulation.”

After two days of silence, Baidu finally spoke. On September 10, 2008, Li Mingyuan, General Manager of Baidu’s E-Commerce Division, responded: “Baidu will open a green channel for Taobao sellers”, allowing Taobao sellers to directly submit website link addresses to Baidu’s index database, without the need for Baidu crawlers crawl.This official statement immediately triggered a war of words between the two sides.Taobao said that the move aims to prevent unscrupulous merchants from manipulating search engines to commit fraud.Baidu, on the other hand, attributed Taobao's blocking of Baidu to "concerns that we are about to launch a service that competes with it."

Since August 2008, a series of new trends in the e-commerce industry may be the real reason for this blocking. On August 13, it was reported that Baidu's C2C platform will be launched soon, and preparations for internal testing have already begun.While it was rumored that Taobao blocked Baidu, on September 4, Taobao officially announced another news: Taobao merged with Alimama.These two actions are regarded by discerning people as the real "fuse" of this incident. As a direct competitor of Baidu Advertising Alliance, Alimama and Baidu have confronted each other several times. It was even reported that as long as Alimama is launched, the number of websites included in Baidu and the ranking of keywords will drop.This time Alimama merged with Taobao, Taobao will naturally speak for its own people.

One is the overlord in the search field, and the other is an e-commerce giant. The two parties have cooperated closely in the past, especially in the aspect of advertising.Before November 2007, Baidu was also an important online advertising platform for Taobao.By purchasing Baidu keywords, Taobao has introduced huge traffic to its merchants. Taobao's blocking of Baidu has long been seen.As early as the second half of 2007, it stopped cooperating with Baidu's PPC.It was also from that time that Taobao began to block Baidu, but it was not the current "complete block".In Taobao's view, the suspension of this cooperation will have no impact on Taobao's traffic and users, so Taobao is not worried that blocking Baidu's search service will bring losses to the company.

Taobao spokesman Lu Weixing believes that Taobao has also analyzed the traffic brought by Baidu. Users search through Baidu mainly to inquire about prices and product reviews, and do not bring in direct transaction volume.Therefore, Taobao.com believes that these traffics are of little significance to Taobao's transaction volume.Is Taobao’s actions to suppress Baidu’s C2C business? Taobao is even more dismissive of such remarks. In the view of Taobao’s senior management, Baidu must first go through pat and eBay to do C2C. There are still many levels to pass.In this regard, Li Yanhong said that Taobao blocked Baidu mainly because he was worried that Baidu's upcoming C2C trading platform would compete with it.

People in the industry believe that the root cause of Taobao's hostility with Baidu is still a conflict of interests.In fact, Taobao only implements a "comprehensive ban" on Baidu, while it adopts a "partial ban" on other search engines such as Google.The most fundamental difference between various search engines is that Baidu is currently the only search engine company that has announced the launch of C2C e-commerce.Statistics show that in the whole year of 2007, the total turnover of China's online shopping market reached 59.4 billion yuan, an increase of 90.4% over the previous year.Among them, Taobao alone has completed a turnover of 43.3 billion yuan, accounting for more than 90% of the market share, and firmly sits on the top spot in the CTOC e-commerce market.

However, Baidu's entry will undoubtedly bring about huge changes in the market.This "Big Mac", which accounts for more than 70% of the market share in China's search engine market, has countless user resources in its hands, coupled with the advantage of being a latecomer, it completely clones the successful experience of Taobao, such as the free principle, green channel , Go online in advance...Who dares to say that tomorrow's CTOC market must still be dominated by Taobao? Just as the aftermath of the "shielding incident" was still going on, Baidu and Alibaba Group, which Taobao belongs to, fought a war of words because of the "Sanlu milk powder incident".

It turned out that a netizen uploaded a document "Sanlu Group Crisis Public Relations Proposal" on September 12, revealing that Sanlu Public Relations had suggested contacting Baidu, hoping that Baidu would assist it in deleting recent negative information.This document was quickly misinterpreted, and it was rumored that "Baidu charged 3 million to block negative information for Sanlu." Baidu immediately issued a statement on the 13th to explain.However, after Baidu's statement was released, on the 14th, Alibaba, Taobao and other websites all used "Sanlu milk powder crisis pulls out Baidu is the largest online underworld", "Netizens blasted Sanlu's 3 million cover Baidu" etc. Appalling headline.In this regard, Baidu strongly condemned, and claimed to reserve the right to legal proceedings against it.And Alibaba's response is: "All the truth will eventually be exposed on the facts", "Welcome to sue, and actively respond to the lawsuit."

In the continuous war of words, Baidu announced on October 18, 2008 that it would officially enter the C2C field. Baidu plans to establish a new online personal trading platform based on its unique search technology and strong community resources.Combined with the development trend of e-commerce, iResearch believes that this indicates that e-commerce will enter the era of "ESE+ESC" (ESE: E-commerce based on search engine; ESC: E-commerce based on Community).Baidu's weapon is as high as 74.5% of the market share in the search field.Baidu CEO Robin Li revealed that the investment in e-commerce sites will be far lower than that of Baidu Japan Station.According to previous disclosures, Baidu plans to invest US$15 million in Japan.

“Because Baidu has established a leading search platform in China, which will help drive the traffic of e-commerce websites in the future. At present, most of the capital investment of domestic competitors is used to drive traffic. In addition, the product development of e-commerce websites requires The funds are also lower than Baidu’s Japan station.” Robin Li said when explaining Baidu’s investment in C2C. In fact, in the past year, Baidu has already started preparations in this regard.As early as June 2007, when Baidu introduced Shen Haoyu as vice president of Baidu, there were various speculations in the industry.Before joining Baidu, Shen Haoyu was the Vice President of Personal Card Issuance Department of American Express, the world's largest credit card company.After taking office, Shen Haoyu focused on Baidu's e-commerce and alliance development business.Excessive reliance on the single profit model of "bidding ranking" has become a bottleneck for Baidu's further development. While Google continues to expand into video, payment, telecommunications and even mobile phone operating systems, Baidu's too calm and calm does not seem to satisfy Wall Street.

Before Tencent created Paipai.com, it was also based on the confidence brought by the huge Tencent community.However, while Tencent has huge community resources, it lacks strong search support.According to third-party data provided by Baidu, more than 30% of Taobao's external traffic is obtained from Baidu.Searching and importing enables netizens to realize transactions very directly and quickly. "The importance of search for C2C is also reflected in Alibaba. The core idea of ​​Jack Ma's acquisition of Yahoo is to build Alibaba into an "e-commerce + search" model. The industry believes that in addition to its strong strength in search, Baidu also has the largest Internet community systems in China, "Baidu Tieba", "Baidu Zhizhi", "Baidu Baike", etc., which are all sources of confidence to support Baidu's entry into the C2C market. "Technology is king" has been interpreted by Internet companies such as Google and Baidu that have performed myths in the capital market, and it seems to have become a standard for Wall Street to judge whether Internet companies have greater development potential.Baidu, a newcomer to the C2C market, has elevated technological innovation to the most critical level in C2C competition. In the view of Yu Jun, vice president of Baidu products, a good C2C website has nearly 10 million items sold every day and has hundreds of millions of visits.This is not only a category of transaction service provision, but also a category of product and technical support.At this stage, to do C2C in China, the technical threshold is actually very high.With the expansion of user scale, products and technology will increasingly become the bottleneck of the company's development and expansion. Fang Xingdong, chairman of the Internet Lab, analyzed that China's Internet has undergone earth-shaking changes in just three to four years: First, from the past one billion US dollars of competition, it has leaped an order of magnitude and directly reached 10 billion US dollars Second, from focusing on professionalism in the past, to a new level of comprehensive strategic layout, diversification is the only choice, but there is only a thin line between smart diversification and stupid diversification.Therefore, Baidu's measures must also be examined in depth against this background.Alibaba has already taken a step ahead in the layout, Tencent has also recently opened up the overall situation, and Baidu, known for its focus, is obviously a step behind in the layout, and a strong move is imminent. The industry generally believes that Baidu's high-profile announcement of entering the C2C field is based on its advantages in popularity, network traffic, and technology platforms.But this is only the first step for Baidu to test the waters in the field of e-commerce. Its ultimate goal is B2B, and it will compete with the giant Alibaba.