Chapter 69 The duo will have a virtual war

Many people use "concentration" to describe Li Yanhong, and the industry also added an attributive to it-"terrible".Indeed, search has always been Robin Li's keyword.In the days before Baidu's listing, he has always had nothing to do. What happened to Baidu? After 2006, Li Yanhong began to express a concern to the outside world: China’s Internet users and GDP have surpassed that of the UK, but China’s search advertising market is only 400 million US dollars, about 1/5 of the UK. 2006 In the fourth quarter of this year, Baidu's rapid growth momentum was finally "suppressed", and the year-on-year growth rate of revenue decreased by more than 30 percentage points compared with the third quarter.It is imminent to seek new sources of income through expansion.Liu Keyu, an analyst at Analysys International, believes that nearly 98% of Baidu’s total revenue depends on search engines with a single model. This is a very important hidden danger, because no company with a single structural model can maintain high growth all the time. law.

Baidu's focus has dragged Robin Li into a rather embarrassing situation. Its profits are even lower than those of newly established online game companies. In the third quarter of 2007, Baidu's net profit was 181.7 million yuan, while Giant Network, which entered the market only in 2006, made a net profit of 290 million yuan in this quarter by relying on the game "Zhengtu". Li Yanhong is known as "the public enemy of the whole people", just like Ma Yun and Ma Huateng in the past.Of course, in the face of the title of "public enemy", Li Yanhong, like Ma Huateng, claimed that he only created his own search site.This website looks more like a community, and all the "diversification" initiatives are just a function to increase user experience.Baidu executives say so, and so do some experts.

What will happen when the "terrible" Robin Li meets the "fighting penguin"? Tencent occupies hundreds of millions of QQ users, and the space for user development is already limited. To better meet user needs and retain users is the primary goal.Search is an important application of the Internet. Tencent will not give up. Losing it means losing users.Baidu has already occupied the vast majority of the Chinese market, but search itself is a product with low user stickiness. The original products such as Tieba and Zhizhi are expected to build a community to retain users. Baidu Space is equivalent to an online version of instant messaging. .

Different routes lead to the same goal, Ma Huateng and Li Yanhong, who have always been quite aggressive, have entered each other's territory.Prior to this, both Tencent and Baidu had very successful aggression histories. As shown in the table: Xie Wen pointed out: Whoever integrates faster, Baidu or Tencent, is more likely to take the lead in new portals.iResearch analyst Wang Qiujun believes that 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.

Naturally, the operating models of the two giants have converged, that is - community.The difference is that Tencent cuts into the community through IM, while Baidu hopes to strengthen its community strategy through IM. "Baidu's IM is definitely a step in Baidu's communityization, and it is a big step in Baidu's continuous improvement of its comprehensive Internet service provider strategy." Industry insiders pointed out. Baidu now has enough users, and these users do need to communicate with each other, but when they need to chat, they become Tencent users.And the hotter Baidu's community is, the more users Baidu will contribute to Tencent, which is embarrassing for Baidu.Therefore, Baidu's IM is not a multiple-choice question at all.

Reminiscent of Tencent Soso, the two giants in the Internet field seem to have reached some kind of tacit agreement in overlapping fields.The lively and lovely penguin is more fond of the young people's market, and the steady and down-to-earth Xiongzi (referred to as Baidu, because its logo is a bear's paw) seems to be more willing to shape its high-end image.As a result, their head-on firefights are only in the imagination of the media. Baidu HI is very similar to MSN's products.In the eyes of Robin Li and Ma Huateng, both Baidu and Tencent have more direct competitors - Google and MSN.Although both Baidu and QQ have already occupied an absolute dominant market share in the country, they are also powerless in the face of the remaining 20% ​​of the market. It seems difficult to impress the hearts of white-collar users with their rapidly developing products relying on the expansion of young users. , not to mention their competitors are Microsoft and Google.

In fact, both Baidu’s IM and Tencent’s Soso are only a part of their own product line, and it can even be said to be an unimportant part. If only because of the launch of these two products, it is speculated whether Baidu and Tencent will When a war breaks out, it is a bit wild to speculate. "For Baidu, its top priority is the C2C business at present, and its long-term goal is to compete with Google in the wireless search market." A person close to Baidu's senior management described it this way.For Tencent, the current important task is to consolidate its position as the fourth portal, and then challenge Sina and Sohu. In the long run, it is to develop its own entertainment community and enhance its stickiness to young user groups.

Although QQ has a successful precedent for entering the news portal, and Baidu also has the glory of creating the myth of Tieba in the past, but unlike communities and portals, search and instant messaging are two relatively professional fields. Users' requirements for products are not only useful, but also There are useful requests.Kang Guoping, a well-known Internet expert, said: "QQ is successful because the number of registered users has reached a critical value, and many people have to use QQ repeatedly to maintain communication. Especially for low-end user groups, after forming a habit on QQ, , it is difficult for him to leave. The design of commercial products on QQ further binds users who have already spent a lot of money on it. It is the same as you have already spent money on a dress, even if it is a little inappropriate , and you are reluctant to throw it away."

Kang Guoping further analyzed: "Many people have hundreds of virtual friends on QQ, and dozens of offline friends. These people are loyal users of QQ. If they want to migrate to Google Talk and Baidu HI, the time The cost is very high. If Baidu can't make a product that is a bit higher than Tencent, it will be difficult to attract users to migrate quickly. MSN and Google Talk are examples. They quickly attracted the trust of some newcomers, but many people continued to retain QQ." It is reported that more functions of Baidu IM will be used together with Baidu C2C, so as to create Baidu version of Taobao and Taobao Wangwang.Obviously, both Baidu and Li Yanhong understand that compared with Alibaba's business atmosphere, Baidu is more full of young people.Therefore, compared with B2B business, C2C is a more suitable market for Baidu, because unlike the rational transactions of enterprises, the relationship between people is more emotional, which is Baidu's advantage.

Therefore, Baidu's IM and Tencent's Soso are nothing more than a game between a bear and a penguin. There is only a game between the two top players, not a fight.What they are doing now is to continue to fill the market that the other party ignored during the rapid development, but this is only today, and we have no way of knowing what will happen in the future.