Chapter 67 The two heroes will meet their opponents

Although Ma Huateng was quite low-key when he was doing the search, today's Penguin is not what it used to be.People in the industry use the term "penguin with long teeth" to describe Tencent's aggressiveness. At the end of 2006, there was such a poster inside Tencent. On the screen, a penguin with a stern expression drove a fighter jet through the battlefield filled with gunpowder. Already exposed shiny fangs. In mid-April 2007, Tencent's huge advertisements appeared in the central business districts of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities. In the advertisement screen, flocks of eagles, whales, and lions formed another huge image similar to it , The "big response and big impact" generated by "gathering 230 million QQ active accounts" is quite shocking.

Although the penguin has grown into a "fighting penguin", Robin Li is still confident.Robin Li's confidence comes from his Baidu.According to the calendar year, the company was founded in 2000, and passed through the winter of the Internet smoothly in 2001; in 2002, the technical year, Baidu search technology really matured; in 2003, the traffic year, the traffic increased by 7 times compared with the previous year ( In 2002, it was on the same level as the search traffic of mainstream portals); in 2004, it was the brand year, "Baidu" was widely recognized, and it went public in 2005.Before the listing, Robin Li was very low-key. After the listing, the outside world enthusiastically paid attention to his rapidly growing wealth, but he seemed unwilling to portray himself as a representative of "getting rich overnight".In general, the story of Robin Li and Baidu can be summed up simply as a focused victory.

This kind of focus can be traced back to 1999. On the National Day of that year, the careful Robin Li noticed that some people began to have e-mail addresses on their business cards, and some people on the street wore T-shirts with ".com" printed on them.Robin Li concludes: The Internet has matured in China.At that time, Li Yanhong, if the money in the passbook did not come in at all in two to three years, it could guarantee the life of the family.Therefore, resignation is a matter of course.Li Yanhong, who never liked to drive, walked around the streets of San Francisco's Sand Hill Road (where Sandhill venture capital is concentrated) day after day during that time.The story continues like a fairy tale, and all the hard work pays off.

"The Chinese market + Robin Li's strong technical background + Robin Li's willingness to give up favorable treatment to start a business" allowed Robin Li, who originally only asked for $1 million, to get an extra $200,000. Robin Li received a huge check, $1.2 million! Immediately Buy a plane ticket and land in Beijing on Christmas Day.At the end of the year, when the Nasdaq index jumped from 2,500 to 3,000 and took another month and a half to reach 4,000, 31-year-old Robin Li was naming his company in preparation. At that time, when Chinese Internet companies generally used Sohoo, Ctrip, eLong and other brands mixed with Chinese and English, Li Yanhong chose the word "Baidu" from Song Ci.But that year, Ma Huateng was facing the biggest embarrassment in his life. The company only had more than 10,000 yuan in its books, and it couldn't even pay the employees' wages.Robin Li may be the least familiar among the group of "knowledge heroes" in 2000.

With the name, the next thing is to open.This was a rather simple start. In the early morning of January 1, 2000, Robin Li called an accountant and five technicians to the Peking University Resource Hotel room where he and his partner Xu Yong shared, "We will start now. The office has two disciplines. , One is no smoking, and the other is no pets.” And then the dot-com bubble burst in the first spring of entrepreneurship, and Robin Li started looking for a second sum of money.There is pressure, but I am not afraid of running out of food - Robin Li spent the money he got in 6 months at the beginning, but spent it in 12 months.Convincing investors is more difficult than it was a year ago, but it is not too difficult. In September, 10 million US dollars was successfully put in place.The pressure on funds has eased, and there are more and more customers—almost all portal websites are using the service of "Baidu" search.But Li Yanhong began to think: the market share has accounted for 80%, and it is still unable to make money. The business model must be wrong.

In August 2001, Li Yanhong "persuaded the board of directors with his own opinion".In the conference call of the board of directors, Robin Li changed his usual moderation, democracy, and quietness to become fierce, decisive, and loud——outside the general manager’s office in Shenzhen, the employees of “Baidu” only heard one person talking all the time——the directors Finally surrendered with reservations: Robin Li, it is not your reasoning that convinces us, but your attitude—since you are so determined and confident, we can only let you try it! In September 2001, Li Yanhong urged Baidu to end the previous operation mode of providing search technology to major portals, terminate cooperation with portals, and launch its own website and bidding ranking.His reasoning for the decision was that in China's Internet winter, sites only wanted the "cheapest technology" rather than the "best technology," which made him feel bad.

Referring to the experience of overture in the US industry that has been paying attention to, Li Yanhong made his own website and introduced PPC.One detail that must be emphasized is that Li Yanhong, who has always been cautious, changed his tactics this time because he saw the bidding ranking launched by Overture in the United States. According to industry insiders, Baidu responded to this matter faster, even surpassing Yahoo in the US market. . In Li Yanhong's view, he resigned from his original job and gave up stock options, not to be a mediocre company.Since then, what everyone has seen is that Baidu took the initiative to become a direct competitor of Google.Moreover, it was an opponent who seemed to be clearly behind at the time.

In March 2002, Li Yanhong called together more than a dozen backbones of the company and expressed a radical idea: within 9 months, increase Baidu's daily page visits by ten times, and improve the page response rate and content update frequency. Completely surpass Google.To this end, Robin Li asked these engineers whose working hours are not fixed to hold regular meetings twice a week at 9 am.After the pep meeting, the engineers went straight to buying mattresses and stacking them in the conference room.In the next 9 months, Baidu's team aimed at "fast, accurate, complete, and new" and maintained two or three major improvements every week. Finally, at the end of the year, it ensured that 60% of the technical indicators surpassed Google.

Baidu turned, a logical progress. "There is no repetition, no turmoil." Until the end of 2003, when Robin Li gave a lecture at Peking University, he no longer had to start with "Who has used 'Baidu'?" In the middle, there will always be people standing up, or expressing love, Or explore specific search techniques. "At this time, I realized that 'Baidu' has basically become a success." The following story seems to be a bit similar. After Baidu went public, just like what happened to Tencent in the past, it encountered wave after wave of siege, but Baidu is still the same Baidu.