Baidu, the process, the growth of Baidu, the process, the growth
At the end of p>1999, when the Nasdaq index jumped from 2,5 to 3,, and it took another month and a half to rush to 4,, 31-year-old Li Yanhong was naming his own company. He has worked in the American search engine company Infoseek for three years, but he is thinking of Inktomi, Infoseek's competitor. I forgot where I read it. Inktomi is an Indian word meaning "Spider of Wisdom". Li reasoned: If a brand from Indian language can be recognized by American users, then if one day your company becomes a world-class company, it is no problem to give it a name from ancient China. So, at the end of 199s, when China Internet companies generally adopted Chinese-English mixed brands such as Sohoo, Ctrip and eLong, he chose the word "Baidu" from Song Ci.
In the following eight years, Li Yanhong made numerous interpretations of the word "Baidu", but he never talked about the origin with Inktomi and the implied dream of internationalization. This is really not an idea that can easily attract * * *. Since 22, Li Yanhong has put forward the idea of internationalization on the board of directors of the company every year, which has been repeatedly rejected. Even by the end of 26, Baidu's success in China was hard to shake. When it announced its entry into Japan, it was still teased by Zhang Chaoyang, the founder of Sohu: "They listened to the voice of Wall Street too much, and they might think it would make money faster." For such doubts, Li Yanhong has a straightforward rhetorical question: "Why does no one question American companies: Why do you want to be a market outside the United States when the American market is so big?" In mid-November 27, Li, who was rarely interviewed, told Global Entrepreneur: "After 15 years, more than 5% of Baidu's revenue should come from outside China." Although he is not confused, Li shows no signs of getting fat in middle age, and his face seems to be 1 years younger than his real age. Many people who started businesses in the same period as him have begun to concentrate on investing and enjoying life, and Li has never played the role of an angel investor. On weekdays, he used a common ceramic teacup with a lid in the 198s, and had to walk dozens of steps in the office area to fetch water from the public drinking fountain. He is probably the least familiar among the "knowledge heroes" in 2. Before going public, Li rarely put on a show. After going public, the outside world paid close attention to his fast-growing wealth, and he was even more reluctant to portray himself as a representative of "getting rich overnight". An entrepreneurial veteran who has left Baidu said that Li is the kind of person who "believes that wine is not afraid of the depth of the alley."
For a long time, he has been labeled as introverted, low-key, dedicated and cautious. In the colorful network industry, Li's personality is too traditional, as if he were a "quiet leader" who came out of management works. The story of Li Yanhong and Baidu is simply summarized as a focused victory: this student majoring in library and information science, who worked for the search engine company Infoseek during the first wave of Internet in the United States, ushered in a "paradigmshift" in the technology industry with great persistence. These judgments are not wrong, but they hide some other aspects of Li. For example, from the outside, it seems that Li Yanhong's life transition is very smooth. There is no shortage of funds from the beginning of his business, and there are peers like Overture and Google to explore and try and make mistakes, so Baidu always has a smooth pace. For a long time, people don't know that Li Yanhong's international instinct, as well as his 11-year immersion in the Internet industry, will try to think in a 15-year time frame. It is even harder for people to know what Li Yanhong is thinking and how he has changed since he went public.
dual roles
to understand the current Robin Li, you must first understand "Robin Li 1." (or "Robin Li beta").
"One advantage of Li Yanhong is that he is relatively calm. When making decisions, I am relatively calm and usually not tempted by the outside world, "said Zhou Hong, who led 3721 to compete with Baidu for several years. In China's Internet industry, Zhou Hong is a representative of speed and strength, but at least in the search engine competition, he thinks he lost to Li. In his view, except for luck, Li's decision seems to be slower and more rational, which really affects the fate of Baidu.
In addition to the competition in search products, Zhou also passed Li Yanhong twice at the capital level. Once in 23, 3721 and Baidu almost merged, and another time, the two companies talked about the acquisition with Yahoo respectively. Li Yanhong will negotiate with 3721 and Yahoo, which seems to show that like all entrepreneurs, he once had some doubts about Baidu's independent development, but as a result, he controlled this fear more than once. With the sale of 3721 to Yahoo, Baidu has entered a stage where the competition resistance is getting weaker.
The calmness and calmness mentioned by Zhou is the role that Li plays in most moments. When Li Yanhong and Xu Yong founded Baidu in 1999, they deliberately built a company with Silicon Valley temperament: recruiting first-class talents, establishing an atmosphere of equal communication, and tolerating failure (please check out the article "Out of Baidu" in Gemag.com.cn in December 26). For example, when Wang Mengqiu, its technical backbone, entered Baidu, his greatest feeling for the company was that everyone spoke very directly and frankly, "You don't have to talk about the weather when you say one thing". Correspondingly, most of the time, Li Yanhong and Xu Yong are not strong interveners. Therefore, in the industry, Baidu is usually not a company that responds to market changes with the fastest speed.
if Li yanhong is just so quiet and pragmatic, it will be difficult for Baidu to make a strategic leap forward-unless Li sets the right direction all the time, and of course, always being right means taking less risks. And this kind of "pragmatism" is what Li Yanhong opposes. He said that his style is: "I dare to make bold decisions, but I am pragmatic at the implementation level and have many alternatives." Therefore, what is often overlooked by the outside world is that Li knows how to switch to the iron fist mode when necessary. Regarding Li's "staged strength", the most appropriate explanation is the "Lightning Plan" in 22. This big move, which almost determines the fate of Baidu, has rarely been fully discussed by the outside world. In September, 21, Li Lizhu ended Baidu's previous operation mode of providing search technology to major portals. With 8% market share in China, he terminated cooperation with portals and launched his own website and bidding ranking. The reason for Li's decision is that in the winter of Internet in China, websites only want "the cheapest technology" instead of "the best technology", which makes him feel bad. 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. Industry insiders recalled that Baidu responded quickly to this matter, even surpassing Yahoo in the US market. "I quit my original job and gave up so many stock options, not to be a mediocre company and just to survive," Li once said. "Every time I tell investors, I always say that you have to look ahead and see what it will look like in two years after one year, or even in three years and five years."
as a result, Baidu has actively become a direct competitor of Google. Moreover, it was an opponent who looked obviously backward at that time. In March 22, Li gathered more than ten backbones of the company and put forward a radical idea: within nine months, Baidu's daily visit page will be increased tenfold, and the page response rate and content update frequency will surpass Google. To this end, he asked these engineers with irregular working hours to hold regular meetings at 9 am twice a week. After the mobilization meeting, the engineers went directly to buy mattresses and piled them in the conference room. In the next nine months, Baidu's team aimed at "fast, accurate, complete and new" and maintained two or three major improvements every week. Finally, by the end of the year, it ensured that 6% of the technical indicators surpassed Google. It can be said that during this year, Li changed from a direction maker to a product manager, which laid the growth curve of Baidu in the future and the smooth IPO in August 25.
Joy and Sadness
With the IPO of Baidu on August 5th, 25, one of Li Yanhong's lives ended.
what the outside world sees is that Baidu's share price rose by 353.85% on the first day, and its revenue doubled in the next 11 quarters. But there are more changes that are not easily felt by the outside world. For example, until Baidu went public, most people still regarded it as "China's Google", and Google's formal entry into China really made Baidu ready, but the subsequent market performance made people tend to believe that Baidu's position had been hard to be shaken by any external forces for at least a few years-Baidu entered a stage where there was no clear opponent. But Li Yanhong couldn't stop. When Global Entrepreneur asked him what he was thinking recently, his answer was: "Many times, a field and some new companies got up, not because the new company did something terrible, but more often because the old company made mistakes and it didn't take into account some very important aspects."
since p>26, he began to express a kind of worry to the outside world: China has surpassed Britain in terms of both the number of netizens and GDP, but the search advertising market in China is only 4 million dollars, which is about one-fifth of that in Britain. "The search volume of Chinese reported in the media is likely to have surpassed that of the United States. With such a large search volume, the whole paid search market is so small, which actually means that a large number of search volumes are wasted. "Li said that China's Internet market is not mature enough, which makes him quite frustrated. This is really like a dilemma. It is true that Baidu needs to focus, but it is a little helpless that its profits are less than those of online game companies that have been established soon. In the third quarter of 27, Baidu's net profit was 181.7 million yuan, while Giant Network, which only entered the market in 26, earned a net profit of 29 million yuan in this quarter by relying on a game called Journey. Moreover, it seems that focusing on the development of search-related products will hardly bring another profit pillar to Baidu: Google's AdSense technology of embedding advertisements into affiliate websites will bring about 4% of its revenue, but Li Yanhong feels that if there are still a large number of search behaviors in Baidu.com with better traffic quality, it is a question whether it is a right choice to "vigorously develop the traffic value of website alliances" now.
the high share price of Baidu, which is admired by the industry, may also become a double-edged sword. As the strategist said, "Nothing can promote the decadence of the army more than complete victory." At the beginning of Baidu's listing, some entrepreneurs left one after another, including Liu Jianguo, CTO, Zhou Limin, chief architect, and Chen Zhenyu, senior manager of Big Search Department. For the employees who stay, Baidu also needs to give an explanation: to what extent is the employee's efforts positively related to Baidu's stock price performance from $1 to $4 in a year? At least in the outside world, concerns about Baidu's execution have gradually increased: Baidu's last sensational product was posted in 23. And its rumored instant messaging software, which will be available in early 27, has not been seen from the outside world.
"Baidu's own mechanism will not have any problems in the general direction," said Li Yanhong. But when asked what is the potential risk, his answer is: "There are many details, if anything.". If it is more negative, it can be said that it is a crisis. "
"Internationalization is localization"
It is not difficult to understand what kind of card internationalization is for Li Yanhong.
Li defines Japanese entry as a test of Baidu's core competitiveness: Does what works in China also work abroad? Under the current growth situation and stock price momentum of Baidu, the cost of this test is not high, but the effect may be doubled: it not only realizes the income growth, but also re-creates the entrepreneurial atmosphere in the company. But the question is: What is Baidu's internationalization? Free Internet service is doomed that Baidu can't take China's cheap labor as a competitive advantage like the internationalization of most China companies. If you rely on the quality of service, which developed country can Baidu make a name for itself? English-speaking countries are excluded first: it is still too early to confront Google in the world. In the neighboring market, South Korea is not a suitable choice. In 23, Li Yanhong visited the Korean market, where the top three search engines were all local companies. "We don't know why people are successful.". The good news is that Japan, whose economy is five or six times the size of China's search engine market, still seems to have a chance. The leading search companies in Japan are Yahoo and Google, two competitors that Baidu is very familiar with. In recent years, Google's share has risen sharply, which also shows that this market is not exclusive, and as long as you work hard, it will pay off. Moreover, Li can feel the market demand. In 26, he hired a Japanese Internet consulting company in Japan to investigate the products of competitors. When Li Yanhong pointed to the "Iamfeelinglucky" button on Google Japan's page and asked the staff of the consulting company, "What's the function of this button?", the other party couldn't give an answer. This strengthened Li's judgment: even Google still failed to design products targeted at Japanese netizens. While Yahoo's search technology is in the United States, even if Sun Zhengyi's Japanese Yahoo team is familiar with local needs, it is still a "two skins" operation mode that technology and user experience are separated. From Baidu's perspective, what needs to be tested is the "understanding of users and understanding of the market" that Li Yanhong regards as the company's core competitiveness.
In an interview with this magazine, Cui Shanshan, technical director of Baidu, mentioned the prospectus when Baidu went public. At that time, in order to express Baidu's special understanding of the China market, the front page of the prospectus contained 38 expressions of English "I" in Chinese, such as "I", "I" and "I". "It's easy to misunderstand," Cui Shanshan said. "In fact, it's not just because we are from China that we can do well in the China market. In that case, we will not be able to enter Japan."
in July p>26, Baidu officially started the research and development of Japanese search engine. This team is not full-time, and hardly knows Japanese. It only relies on the experience of Chinese word segmentation and a translator to complete the conversion from Chinese word segmentation to Japanese word segmentation within one month. After the feasibility was verified, Baidu established a special Japanese search R&D team at its Beijing headquarters. In addition to daily development, this team also needs to learn Japanese with specially invited Japanese professors, and their scores are regularly assessed and included in their personal performance. Throughout 27, in addition to launching Japanese search, Baidu's main job in Japan was to set up a local team and replicate Baidu's entrepreneurial approach in that year. In Japan, Li Yanhong's recruitment requirement is "Japanese with a deep understanding of the Internet and search engines", but it does not require academic qualifications and work experience, or even Chinese or English. For Baidu,