The people of Baidu have been a little annoyed recently. The "bidding gate" incident caused by CCTV is still reverberating. In the past few days, the media has revealed that Baidu gave CCTV 40 million in "sponsorship fees" to settle the incident in the second half of last year when CCTV exposed that Baidu's bidding rankings contained a large number of false medical advertisements. Searching for "Baidu-CCTV-40 million" on Baidu, there were 23,400 pieces of information. Haha, I really admire Baidu's candor and courage!
I don’t want to say more about the 40 million “sponsorship fee”. It doesn’t matter whether Baidu is forced or willing, whether those who understand current affairs are heroes, or whether heroes do not suffer immediate losses. In short, it shows that both Baidu and CCTV have made their own efforts to build a harmonious society. It is better to dissolve enemies than to make enemies, not to mention that both are well-known independent brands in China.
Let’s briefly review CCTV’s exposure of Baidu last year. On November 15th and 16th last year, CCTV's "News 30 Minutes" program exposed the shady secrets of Baidu's pharmaceutical bidding rankings for two consecutive days. "As long as they spend a lot of money, those unqualified 'ganghu doctors' can be ranked at the top of Baidu's search results. Many patients were deceived because of this." After the incident involving the spread of false information about Baidu's search bidding rankings, which can be called the "melamine" of the Internet industry, Baidu's stock price suffered a setback for days, falling nearly 40% in four days.
That month, the "China Brand Events in November 2008" released by the Brand China Industry Alliance Development Research Center listed Baidu's "bidding gate" among the "Top Ten Selected Events" and commented: "Providing search services certainly requires profit support, but The ranking system must also be 'open and transparent'. The CCTV exposure is unlikely to be a fatal blow to Baidu, but Baidu still needs to better balance the relationship between profitability and customer trust."
After that, Baidu immediately optimized PPC and made two main adjustments: first, it adjusted PPC products and no longer sold some sensitive keywords; second, it launched products and services similar to PPC. The purpose of the former is to avoid the moral accountability aroused by PPC products and eliminate social impact, while the latter is to explore new sources of profit outside of PPC. From Baidu's apology statement to now, when searching for the two keywords "cancer" and "venereal disease" on Baidu, all the "promotion" pages of various hospitals and drugs that were previously displayed have been removed. Because, Baidu no longer sells such sensitive keywords.
In fact, in the past few years, Comrade Robin Li has been trying to modify Baidu's bidding rankings to avoid possible accusations of "manual interference in search results, triggering spam, malicious blocking, and extortion marketing" and to balance commercial interests and social responsibilities.
I don’t want to talk about the grievances between Baidu and CCTV. This is too cliche and something that everyone knows well, and there is nothing new to talk about. Let’s talk about Baidu as a normal enterprise.
Since it is an enterprise, we need to ask the following questions? First, does Baidu need to make money? Second, with Google, do we still need Baidu? Third, is Baidu's way of making money legitimate?
Let’s discuss the first question first, does Baidu need to make money?
Anyone who understands the history of Baidu's development should know that Baidu's survival environment was difficult before Robin Li discovered PPC. This is particularly similar to the early days when Yang Weiguang took over CCTV. At that time, CCTV still relied on royal food, so the quality of the programs can be imagined. But at the same time, Baidu has no royal food to eat, and will starve to death without food. We ask ourselves, when each of us enjoys the free services provided by Baidu with peace of mind, who has ever cared about Baidu's survival issues. It is not difficult to see from Baidu's financial report that Baidu invests heavily in research and development every year, so people will feel more and more comfortable when using Baidu. But if it doesn't make money, it's still a question whether Baidu can survive, let alone invest heavily in research and development.
So, with Google, do we still need Baidu?
Maybe some friends will say, if there is no Baidu, we can use Google. You are absolutely right! But have you ever thought that if there were no Baidu, one day Google would suddenly charge users? You must not have forgotten the lesson of Microsoft’s black screen door last year, right? Also, if all Chinese people Using Google, our country will face huge risks in terms of information security! Chinese officials and the Chinese people are well aware of the things that concern them every day, and everything we think will be revealed. In this way, China will no longer have any secrets. Isn't it scary?
Now, let’s discuss whether Baidu’s method of making money is legitimate?
First of all, I think Robin Li is not only a genius technically, but also a genius in business. Just for inventing PPC, he should win the Nobel Prize in Economics :)
What is the essence of bidding ranking? It is advertising!
We can accept billboards on the streets and alleys, we can accept LCD screen advertisements from Focus on large and small buildings, we can accept aviation advertisements on large and small airplanes, we can accept advertisements from every TV station and almost crazy TV shopping, why can't we accept it? What about Baidu’s very gentle and subtle “promotion”?
As an Internet user, if you can't even understand that websites with the word "promotion" on the back of the webpage are advertising, I don't think there is any need to go online. I don’t understand the difference between this and the various soft and hard advertisements that appear every day on TV prime time? Baidu provides you with search services. Funds are needed for survival and research and development, but users are unwilling to pay, and someone happens to be willing to pay. The conditions The purpose is to rank his website higher. In order to prevent everyone from being deceived, Baidu also specially added the word "promotion", which means that you can make up your own mind, click if you like, and don't click if you don't want to. There is no sense of coercion. meaning.
This kind of Baidu's bidding ranking is probably much more civilized than the advertisements that pop up on many portal websites, the soft-text advertisements in newspapers, and the image advertisements broadcast on TV. Pop-up advertisements are compulsive and you have to watch them. If you find them annoying, please go to another website; soft-text advertisements are hidden and look like news, but contain company or product information; there are also many feature films. It feels like a TV show, but in fact it is an advertisement... These forms of advertisement are either a bully's attack, or a cover-up. Baidu's bidding ranking is very clear, with the word "promotion" at the end, which clearly tells you that this is an advertisement. The top ranking is not based on search volume, but is paid. The information is for reference only.
There is nothing wrong with making money through advertising, so Baidu makes money in a reasonable way.
Of course, it is Baidu's responsibility and obligation to identify the accuracy, reliability and security of information. Especially when it comes to important industries such as medical and health care and food safety that are related to people's lives and health, it should be strictly controlled to prevent counterfeiters from getting away with it. This requires a complete detection system and monitoring system. But these are definitely not Baidu’s original intentions. Since they are wrong, let’s change them. Baidu’s attitude and actions should be obvious to all. Therefore, when facing some problems that do exist in the operation process of Baidu PPC, we should adopt an inclusive attitude to see the consequences and give the children who made mistakes a chance to change their ways. This is also a blessing for China's independent Internet brands. Now, China's Internet profit model is constantly improving and innovating, and problems of one kind or another will certainly arise in the process. When a problem comes, don’t be afraid of it. Stand firm and solve it based on the overall situation.
At this point, I have to add that I remember that on March 15 of a certain year, comrades from CCTV denounced Focus Media’s spam text message problem. Now, the obedient Focus warriors cut off their wrists and completely shut down Focus Wireless, which was regarded by CCTV as the main culprit of spam text messages. However, there are more and more spam text messages on our mobile phones.
Speaking of garbage, there is another interesting thing. Last night I was working overtime to make a promotional video for an event and needed to search for something. When I entered the URL of Baidu, what came out was a Google page. I was shocked and thought that something was wrong with my mind! Later, I heard someone said that the computer was poisoned, but the poison was probably too evil.
Last year at the China Business Leaders Annual Conference, I was invited as an interactive guest to participate in the dialogue on the "Core Values and Brand Accumulation" sub-forum. At that time, the host asked each guest to write down the Chinese brands that they thought were the best and the Chinese brands with the most problems. My answer is that the brand with the best answer is Baidu, and the brand with the most problems is Giant Network. These two brands are both Internet brands and both are profitable, but one is serving the people, and the other is making money from teenagers, but it has not brought any positive impact on the development of society and the progress of the country. To this day, I still insist on this view
Author: Wang Yong