360 must have some backup plans to enter search. It will definitely conflict with Sogou in the future, because both parties rely on browsers for search development. To surpass Baidu, they must first compete with each other. Therefore, Sogou has become Baidu's moat. However, 360 and Baidu will inevitably face major conflicts in the next two years.
A new pattern will emerge in Chinese search in the future
"Cardinal" is at it again. Just like when it entered the security and mobile phone industries, 360 also caused huge panic in the search market. According to data from multiple websites, 360 Search has shown strong traffic growth. Kingsoft Network CEO Fu Sheng (Weibo) even boasted that 360 Search has quickly captured nearly 10% of the search market share, surpassing Sogou to become the second largest search engine in China.
However, Zhou Hongyi, chairman of 360, has always kept a low profile on 360's entry into search. In a text message reply to Tencent Technology, he pointed out that the search market share is huge, and it is meaningless to always think about who is grabbing whose business. It is better to focus on how to improve the user experience. He emphasized that when entering the search market, he did not want to start a war with anyone, but just wanted to make it easier for users to choose different search engines.
Zhou Hongyi would even call and ask Weibo celebrities to delete the news they posted about 360’s entry into search. This is completely different from 360’s attitude towards entering the mobile phone market. At the beginning, Zhou Hongyi was "heavy-handed" on Xiaomi mobile phones, but now there is not much noise in the search.
When did 360 become so low-key? Some people on Weibo pointed out that this is related to the hasty launch of 360 Search. Its functions are not perfect at present. It was launched forcefully with insufficient technology accumulation and was snatched through entrances such as 360 Security Guard and browsers. Market, this is just a preliminary test of the search market, and there are doubts about the so-called 360 Search surpassing Sogou to become China's second largest search engine within five days.
Cheng Lingfeng, a senior media person, believes that 360 must have some back-up strategies when it enters search, and it will definitely conflict with Sogou in the future, because both parties rely on browsers for search development. To surpass Baidu, they must first compete with each other, so Sogou has become Baidu's moat. Cheng Lingfeng also predicted that 360 and Baidu will inevitably face major conflicts in the next two years, and the search market will face major changes.
However, Google (Weibo) China was most injured when 360 entered search. According to Deep Throat in the industry, 70% of Google’s traffic comes from the 360 browser. In order to boost the stock price that has been continuously shorted, 360 replaced the Google search on the 360 browser with its own search, which is likely to completely plunge Google China into a place of no return.
The statement “360 Search became the second largest search engine in five days” is doubtful
With the launch of 360's search engine interface and becoming the default search engine for 360 website navigation and browsers, data released yesterday by the technology information website "Webmaster's Home" and the mobile communication community "Android Forum" showed that 360 Search has surpassed Sogou. Becoming the second largest traffic source after Baidu.
A webmaster website traffic source
Well-known webmaster Wu Hongsheng (Weibo) said: "The traffic and rankings of 360 have soared in the past few days. Zhou Hongyi tells everyone the fact that you don't need technology to do searches, and you can steadily defeat those buddies who have been working hard for decades with technology. "Fu Sheng even revealed that 360 Search has become the second largest search engine in China. Fu Sheng pointed out that search on 360 is inevitable and a step towards improving the business chain. Now it is just a matter of modifying the default search engine, and there will be bigger moves in the future. "360 Search is still in the testing phase, and there is no guarantee that there will be a 'war' in the next step."
Data cited by Qianshu Data
This makes the idea that 360 Search has become the second largest search engine in China quickly spread on the Internet. However, the analysis agency Qianshu Data immediately issued a report citing Alexa data to refute, saying that Baidu continues to lead in the country, with Google searches including (.com and .hk) ranking second, followed by Sosou and Sogou. The upstream websites of 29 mainstream websites also have no 360 search.
Some people believe that the news that "360 Search jumped to second place" comes from a few small websites, the data is single, and the data of a few days is not convincing in the industry. Qianshu Data Consultant Yu Guoming said: "Just because 360 Search is included in the statistical results of two small websites, 360 cannot be suddenly ranked second in the industry."
In fact, the 360 search engine is very simple. It is mainly divided into seven options: news, web pages, videos, MP3s, pictures, maps, and Q&A. 360 currently only provides web and video searches, and the others are provided by Baidu, Sogou, and Google.
Comparison parameters listed by Sogou
Ru Liyun, general manager of Sogou’s search division, released a set of data: 1,015 words were used as a sampling set of query words, and the results of five search engines, sogou, baidu, google, soso, and 360, were captured on August 19. As a result, after analyzing the results of each company, the first three displayed results were obtained, which showed the co-occurrence of each company's results and Baidu search. Ru Liyun insinuated that a lot of Baidu data was captured in the 360 search.
A senior person in the search industry pointed out, "No mainstream search manufacturer has done this. This is a forced launch with insufficient technology accumulation. It is functionally disabled. Lao Zhou (Zhou Hongyi) is used to borrowing other people's technology to launch products first, and quietly changed User habits, and then seize the market. This is the same routine as 360’s purchase of Romanian anti-virus engines to provide anti-virus services, but in the end it destroyed Rising and Kingsoft.” He believes that this is 360’s “conspiracy” to attack the search market.
360’s move into search has aroused alarm among peers. Currently, the "Q&A" option of 360 Search will jump to Baidu Know by default. When jumping to Baidu Know, Baidu will prompt the user on the page to set Baidu as the homepage. Baidu reminds users: "You accessed Baidu through 'Qihoo Search'. If you want to get a complete and high-quality Baidu search experience, you can set Baidu as your homepage or add Baidu to your desktop."
When searching for "Baidu Knows" on Google, Sogou, Soso and other search engines and entering, Baidu does not prompt the user. When using 2345 and other URLs to navigate to the default Baidu search, Baidu does not prompt the user. This tip from Baidu is specifically for Qihoo 360 search.
Just the day after 360 launched search, Baidu urgently launched the "Search Security Alliance" and announced that it would join forces with security vendors to form a security alliance to jointly combat phishing, illegal, fraudulent and other websites. Baidu said that "the security alliance will develop a security monitoring mechanism for the entire network to provide immediate prompts for illegal and false information."
This is considered to be a strategy by Baidu to prevent 360 from attacking its main search position in the name of security. An industry insider pointed out that if 360 wants to crack down on other search engines, it will definitely focus on "user interests". To put it bluntly, it means using 360 Safe Browser or 360 Security Guard to mark the search results of other manufacturers. , such as "This webpage is an advertisement, has the risk of Trojan horses, and may leak privacy." This trick is enough to scare away many ordinary netizens. Rather than nip it in the bud, Baidu adopted a “preemptive” defensive strategy this time.
Baidu, which occupies nearly 80% of the search market share, is unwilling to directly compete with 360 in the search market. Baidu Vice President Wang Jin refused to make any statement on 360's entry into search. Baidu's public relations department also declined to comment. However, Baidu has privately been brewing defense incidents such as security alliances.
Earlier, after witnessing the 3Q war and the demise of Kingsoft Network Shield, and realizing the threats it faced, Baidu actively supplemented its clients and named 2011 the Year of Clients. Subsequently, it launched browsers, Baidu Video, and input methods. I hope to enhance the capabilities of the terminal. Not long ago it was revealed that Baidu wanted to acquire UCWEB. Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan once said, “This is not groundless.”
As a company similar to the 360 model, 360 has long been listed as the number one opponent by Wang Xiaochuan. Technology blog Cloud Technology once wrote an analysis that if 360 wants to challenge Baidu, it must completely defeat Sogou. Sogou hopes to squeeze out Baidu’s search share through the power of browsers, but encounters the ceiling of 360 on the road to expanding browser share. The two will surely have a A contest.
Shortly after the launch of 360 Search, Sogou immediately made a review. The evaluation adopts the Cranfield framework commonly used in the industry. It judges the quality of a certain result based on the user needs behind the query words, uses different scores to indicate the quality of the results, and finally uses DCG to provide indicators. The result is: "360 still lags behind Baidu, Sogou and Google."
In view of the development history of 360, Wang Xiaochuan publicly stated: "360 has finally released universal search. It is a good thing that netizens have more choices. But search technology takes a long time to accumulate, and we also have to worry about poor quality and improper means to harm users." . I have heard before that 360 Search has some ‘extreme measures’ that go beyond the bottom line in the research and development process.”
However, when being contacted by Tencent Technology, Wang Xiaochuan did not realize that the two parties were competing in search. He only said: "We are competing with 360 in the browser market, and our strategy in the search market is to 'beware of 360 and attack Baidu. '".
At present, Sogou is still weaker than 360 in terms of revenue and users, and is unwilling to touch this biggest rival prematurely. Wang Xiaochuan once said frankly that under the current structure, especially in the browser market, Sogou is relatively passive. The market share of 360 Browser is almost 4 times that of Sogou Browser. What depresses Wang Xiaochuan the most is that "if you install Sogou products on a computer that has 360 installed, you will be prompted that it is unsafe."
In fact, Zhou Hongyi, who has always been called the "Cardinal", seems to be very low-key when he enters search. He does not show the sharpness of the past. He only means that 360 comprehensive search is a functional extension of website navigation and is also an integral part of the 360 open platform. Everyone uses search to find answers to questions, but no search engine can perfectly answer all questions. 360 is a search platform where users can effortlessly switch between different engines to find the answers they need.
Zhou Hongyi also emphasized in his text message reply to Tencent Technology that the search market share is very large. It is meaningless to always think about who is grabbing whose business. Instead, we should focus on how to improve the user experience.
According to the official introduction of 360, 360’s initial development positioning was community search. Although the business focus shifted to the security field, the search team remained intact, and search technology was continuously developed and never stopped. However, the current 360 search support does not only come from the 360 internal team, but also from the outside, a company founded by a former Google China employee.
Tencent Technology inquired through various sources and learned that he is Zhang Dong, a former Google China researcher with a doctorate in machine learning. Zhang Dong was also a former Baidu scientist and Fengchao system architect. According to Zhou Hongyi and Zhang Dong’s plan, 360 is planning to acquire Zhang Dong’s entrepreneurial team and develop it in parallel with 360’s original search team.
A former 360 employee told Tencent Technology that there is no need for Zhou Hongyi to be high-profile now. The search technology is not all his own, and the product is not mature yet. It will not be too late to be high-profile when it matures. Cheng Lingfeng, a senior media person, believes that 360's current low profile is inevitable because 360's huge search traffic comes from switching between Baidu and Google search engines. It is not good to attract too many people's attention. 360's low profile at this moment is to prepare for the subsequent move, which may even be followed by a change of moves.
Guo Ang, the former head of Sogou’s web search results, believes that Chinese search will see a new pattern in the future. As the difference in quality becomes smaller, the search war in the future will be a very fierce battle for channels, markets and marketing.
Earlier, "China Times" reminded that ten years ago, Zhou Hongyi and Robin Li had a bloody battle over IE browser search. Ten years later, Baidu became the leader in Chinese search. After several moves, Zhou Hongyi became the leader in the field of Internet security. Dominant. Wherever Zhou Hongyi goes, there will be war, not to mention the search he had been obsessed with ten years ago. This time, Robin Li and Wang Xiaochuan should be careful.