Chapter 66 Hutch will meet

When the spear and the shield meet, how should the story be interpreted? In the early morning of February 29, 2008, Baidu Beijing Headquarters quietly put out a roll-up notice for the internal test of "Baidu Hi has prizes to grab 'fresh' experience" to attract employees who go to work after dawn to actively participate in the experience of IM products.And earlier on February 20, Baidu announced on its official website that it was recruiting instant messaging software product managers, software R&D engineers and other IM-related positions. The news of Baidu's entry into IM has caused a commotion in the IT industry.However, unlike in the past, the news that Baidu pushed IM this time came from "Baidu insiders".What is quite interesting is that although the outside world's discussion about Hi has become more and more popular, Baidu, as the protagonist, has always been very taboo about Hi's remarks.

According to Baidu sources, from the very beginning, IM has been positioned as an enterprise-level strategic product by Baidu.Yu Jun, vice president of Baidu products who was in charge of Baidu Tieba, was officially entrusted with the important task of developing Baidu Hi.Yu Jun created the brilliance of Baidu Tieba. As a new product launched in 2003, Baidu Tieba has become the channel with the largest traffic contribution to Baidu after Baidu's two core products, web search and image search, in just a few years 8% of Baidu's total traffic). In this way, Hi has "began to come out after a long time" before it was released.Clearly, instant messaging is a gold mine, and it's attracting a lot of gold diggers. UC, Bubbles, Google Talk, and Wang Zhidong’s Lava-Lava, which claims to have defeated QQ within two years, all once hoped to get a share of this market. However, as time went by, they disappeared in the Internet world running at the speed of light. Or in obscurity.

For a long time, when there is only one actor on the stage, the audience will inevitably feel disappointed. China's instant messaging is such a stage.Therefore, the emergence of Baidu IM has aroused the fantasies of countless people, not to mention that compared with other short-lived competitors, Baidu has the strength to "hand-to-hand" with Tencent.Naturally, many people have conclusively proved that Baidu wants to enter the instant messaging market, and its target is Tencent.From search to communities and blogs, IM is created on the basis of the joint efforts of the two.At the same time, enter the news and information, and achieve a new portal and a large community based on search.

Before Robin Li launched instant messaging, Ma Huateng was also eyeing search. In 2006, Tencent has formed four major platforms: IM, qq.com, QQ game and Paipai.com, which is the industrial layout of "online life" that Tencent has always emphasized. It conducts a comprehensive business layout around the formed community and provides community users with Information acquisition, communication, entertainment, business and other comprehensive Internet content services.Tencent will use search to integrate this community. In the field of search, latecomers are still in a very difficult state. Why does Tencent go upstream and do search by itself? Ma Huateng’s explanation for this is:

We are in the initial stage. We are currently cooperating with search engines such as Google, first using brands with traffic, and then integrating the results. Later, we will increase investment, because outside companies are only good at web search, and in the Tencent community The integration of the internal structure can not help.In addition, searching for items in Tencent's e-commerce business and finding people in communities and Q-zones all require different levels of search technology. One of our ideas is to learn from the comprehensive search of the Korean portal NAVER. Its biggest feature is that it can reflect "precipitation". For example, if you enter the keyword "Da Vinci Code", the search results will not only display links to traditional search engines , There will also be a "special page" related to this, with pictures, director introductions, comments, and community search results-this search not only reflects the results of human maintenance, but also has the cooperation of search engines.

Now that everyone uses search engines, everyone has to find results page by page. This process has no precipitation or accumulation, which is actually very wasteful.If there is a team to operate, organize and operate keywords, people can directly see the results next time they come.But the difficulty lies in the need for human and community intervention, as well as information organization technologies such as library intelligence, encyclopedia compilation, etc., in addition to balancing user-to-user participation, and preventing mischievous behavior—thus, it is necessary to Supported by a strong operation team, South Korea NAVER has an operation team of 700 people.

In addition, knowledge search may also become an entry point. Unlike Sina's "Aiwen", we hope that the IM community can play a role in knowledge search. Now the knowledge search based on WEB can accumulate, but it is not enough to respond to users' questions immediately. For example, "Which hospital to go to, which doctor to see?" and other questions, you may not be able to find someone who happens to know the answer by the computer, or some people do not want to answer because it is too troublesome. We hope to use IM to connect users who are online instantly, and to connect users who "know, but are afraid of trouble and don't want to speak" to make the program simpler, so that he can help others and be meaningful. Precipitation is a very good thing.

In terms of search, first, innovation, we have no burden, and dare to take a different path from others; second, if we can make more use of the community advantages between users, there may be some benefits.Just like we do C2C, we don’t need to charge for C2C, we can just treat it as one of our functions, and the intangible value it can bring us may be more than the charge. Ma Huateng has made no secret of his ambitions to enter the heartland of the Internet, the search engine market.Compared with Ma Huateng's confidence, Li Yanhong poured a basin of cold water. "I don't think he will do search," said Robin Li, the founder and CEO of Baidu, when he was interviewed by the media. Faced with Ma Huateng's approaching the "starting point" of Baidu's career, Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li gave a decisive answer.

On March 2, 2006, Tencent launched its search website, SOSO.com, and began to carry the search business independently, and is committed to providing users with richer and more competitive Internet application services.At that time, Tencent repeatedly stated that its Soso was different from the leading search engines and was more focused on meeting the needs of young users. This attitude also wanted to prevent Baidu from viewing it as a major competitor.When invading the search field, Ma Huateng's attitude was exactly the same as when Tencent was a portal. However, Tencent is still cooperating with Google, Baidu's competitor, to provide search technology support. Up to now, Soso has quietly started to provide various search services such as web pages, maps, videos, pictures, music, and forums.Recently, Tencent has also launched Wenwen. This website with an independent domain name is obviously aimed at "Baidu Zhizhi".

Prior to this, Ma Huateng reached a business cooperation with Google in the United States on February 4, 2005.Because, at this time, Tencent did not have the competitive strength to start a search site similar to Sogou and iAsk. After all, Tencent's strength lies in instant messaging. Ma Huateng has repeatedly stated his development strategy in public: tailor-made online life models that meet the needs of all levels for users, among which web search belongs to the level of "information transmission and knowledge acquisition" to meet the most basic needs of users .In fact, the launch of the SOSO website is a concrete manifestation of Tencent's emphasis on user needs and its commitment to a one-stop, full-value chain online life strategy.

When Tencent meets Baidu, what will happen? Wang Qiujun, an analyst at iResearch, believes that business expansion is necessary for both Baidu and Tencent.Baidu needs to combine users in the form of a community, and use human-to-human communication to make up for the lack of flexibility in robot search; and the introduction of PC clients is also the general trend, and further control over user entrances is strengthened.Tencent also needs to use search to open up business lines, increase user transfer costs, and consolidate the control of the QQ platform.And Ma Huateng emphasized that Tencent still needs to use search to integrate this community.Search is the nerve. In the expansion process of the two, the focus of Baidu is still search, and the focus of Tencent is still community, but the overlap of the two business lines is inevitable.For users, as long as they provide the same or similar services, there will inevitably be trade-offs. From this point of view, it is fate that Tencent meets Baidu.