The battle for supremacy between Tencent and Alibaba—where has Baidu gone?

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In 2015, the Chinese stock market was turbulent, and people were immersed in the dream of a bull market. Recently, Alibaba, which is listed in the United States, once fell below $80, hitting a new low since its listing, and its market value shrank to $198.7 billion, and then rose to more than $210 billion; Tencent, a fellow of BAT, has always been close to Alibaba, and its market value once exceeded $200 billion. It is not difficult to see that Alibaba and Tencent, the two superstars of the Internet era, are playing a tug-of-war with the complicated feelings of stockholders.

Last September, Alibaba, which was in the limelight, surpassed the combined market value of Tencent and Baidu with a market value of more than 250 billion US dollars, which was almost twice and four times of the latter at the highest point; Jack Ma, the "big brother", even believed that Apple, Google, Tencent and Baidu were not worth mentioning, and only he could compete for a trillion US dollars in the future. But it is easier said than done. Less than a year later, the dazzling wealth list has quietly changed - the Internet world where many heroes compete for supremacy has once again become turbulent: a battle for the king is unfolding between the two giants Tencent and Alibaba.

In fact, Tencent and Alibaba have been fighting fiercely since they started to build their respective ecosystems: Alibaba invested in Sina Weibo and took the opportunity to expand Taobao. Tencent once banned WeChat public accounts involving Taobao advertisements, intending to eliminate the threat to WeChat marketing; the emergence of "WeChat red envelopes" made Jack Ma exclaim "Pearl Harbor attack". In response, Alibaba brought together brothers such as Sina Weibo and Xiami to form an alliance to fight against Tencent, and at the same time developed "Laiwang" on its own, trying to compete with WeChat. With Alibaba's successful listing in the United States, Jack Ma calmly commented: "WeChat is only a product at the carrier-based aircraft level, while Alibaba is building an aircraft carrier fleet", mocking Tencent for "a good hand that was ruined".

The battle between Alibaba and Tencent goes far beyond this. From Internet finance to O2O, and to the capital market, the smoke of war is almost everywhere: the profit competition between Yu'ebao and Licaitong was once a hot topic in Internet finance; although Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache have merged, people still remember the previous "money-burning war"; Alibaba invested in Momo and Xiami, one social and the other entertainment, both of which touched on Tencent's core business. Tencent invested in JD.com and refused to give in to Alibaba's Cainiao Logistics.

Different genes of enterprises determine different styles and directions of development. Alibaba focuses on transaction data, builds e-commerce platforms, introduces traffic (Taobao Alliance) and payment (Alipay), and finally connects logistics (Cainiao) and cloud computing (Alibaba Cloud). The focus is always on business foundations; Tencent's core is social networking, focusing more on product innovation around users, focusing on relationship chains and experience, extending to games, media, videos, etc., and relying on QQ and WeChat to build a strong social platform.

Alibaba's success is due to its choice of business model in the PC era ("fakes" have always been a weakness of Taobao. Although Jack Ma has been fighting against counterfeits in a high-profile manner, the Taobao mentality of advocating low quality and low prices has, to some extent, made Alibaba a concentration camp for counterfeits); in the mobile Internet era, user experience is the highest priority. Although Alibaba has long invested in O2O and mobile Internet (Sina Weibo, Meituan, AutoNavi, Momo, and Xiami.com all have their presence), the lack of product genes and mobile entry-level platforms is also an unavoidable weakness. Alibaba's advantages are more in operations and marketing, but in the mobile Internet era, the giants are competing for entry points (i.e., traffic distribution platforms in the PC era). Alibaba has indeed saved a game with Taobao and Alipay clients on the mobile side, but this seems more like a transfer of traditional advantages rather than product innovation. Recently, Taobao launched "Taobao Shop" on the wireless side, but as early as July last year, Paipai announced its strong return in the form of micro stores.

Tencent's achievements in advertising and games are unquestionable, but it has been suppressed by Alibaba in the fields of payment, e-commerce, O2O, etc. Now, relying on WeChat, a super ticket to the mobile Internet era (a strong social platform with 800 million users), Tencent has actively invested in Dianping and JD.com, and cooperated with WeChat red envelopes to build a mobile ecosystem. It can be foreseen that the impact will have a huge impact on Alibaba. At a critical juncture, Alibaba's "Laiwang" is still the "Laiwang" for self-entertainment, and launching a game platform is also a loss of trust; the industry has long heard that WeChat public accounts have a trend of replacing light mobile APPs, which undoubtedly adds another valuable point to Tencent in building a mobile e-commerce platform. In this way, Jack Ma's uneasiness can be roughly imagined. Of course, the relationship between Tencent and Alibaba is not as simple as a single competition. As major shareholders of ZhongAn Online, China's first online insurance company, they have a certain subtle relationship.

With the Premier proposing the concept of Internet+ at this year's two sessions, local governments have begun to promote the disclosure of municipal service data, which is naturally a godsend for Alibaba and Tencent. In March, Tencent launched the "Smart City" strategy based on WeChat, which has been launched in Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places; on April 22, Alibaba, Ant Financial and Sina Weibo jointly launched the "Internet+ City Service" strategy in Beijing. The layout of the two giants this time is roughly the same, mainly integrating government agency data and providing comprehensive urban life services to citizens through portal platforms and cloud computing. It can be foreseen that a competition will begin again.

The Internet has penetrated every corner of society and has become the bread and butter of people's daily lives. The different business empires born from it are always inextricably linked. Let us wait and see whether Tencent can surpass Alibaba and become the new king of China's Internet industry.