Baidu did three things right in its transformation to mobile Internet

Since the third quarter of 2014, Baidu's mobile search traffic has surpassed traditional PC Internet. What is the secret of Baidu's transformation?

At the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen last year, Baidu Chairman Robin Li admitted that Baidu had too many gaps to fill in its shift from PC products to mobile, and that the entire transformation was full of danger and pain. "Baidu was once accused of being outdated, and new companies will rise in the mobile search field. This makes Baidu realize that there is a lot to do." He once told Baidu's investors that Baidu would enter a transition period within two years and would do its best to develop mobile products during the transition period.

At yesterday's Geek Park Innovation Conference, Robin Li shared that Baidu did three important things right during its transition period: first, belief in technology; second, being down-to-earth; and third, being determined in terms of money.

"I am willing to spend money and I am willing to invest. I don't care what Wall Street thinks. I don't care if my stock price will drop by half or more. I must make this happen," said Robin Li.

Finding the future through technology

"In the past two years, Baidu has always felt that technology has not become less important in the era of mobile Internet, but has become more important." Robin Li concluded that the success of Baidu's transformation in the past two years was due to its pursuit of technology.

He said: "First, I like technology very much, so I am more likely to grasp technology-related things; second, as an enterprise, we must consider technology issues, and technology drives the development of the enterprise."

Baidu's financial report shows that since the third quarter of last year, Baidu's R&D investment has exceeded 1 billion yuan for five consecutive quarters, accounting for nearly 15% of its revenue. Over the past year, financial reports show that Baidu's cumulative investment in R&D has exceeded 7 billion yuan.

It can be seen that in its technology layout, Baidu, on the one hand, has poached talents from Silicon Valley, such as Andrew Ng, the father of Google Brain, who is currently leading Baidu in close technological competition with many international giants in Silicon Valley; on the other hand, it has combined open cloud, data factory, and Baidu Brain into a "big data engine", and opened up a whole set of core capabilities such as big data storage, analysis, and intelligent processing to the outside world through platformization and interface methods.

"Natural expression requires high technical skills. Just like in search, voice and image search are more convenient for users in the mobile Internet era," said Robin Li.

He gave an example, voice search was not widely used in the PC Internet era, because it was strange for users to hold a microphone in front of a PC, but today's mobile phones are used to make calls, so it is natural for users to speak to them. In many cases, input is not the most convenient way to express, and voice is the most convenient. "For example, how many yen is 108,000, but it is very troublesome to actually input these."

It is actually more difficult to truly recognize what the user is saying with voice, and with images.

"There are also a lot of technical problems here." Li Yanhong said that Baidu has solved a large number of these problems in the past two years, including connecting people and services. In the past, users could only search for information on it, but now they can search for where the nearest cinema is. These technological innovations have made users increasingly dependent on Baidu in the mobile era and get what they want on Baidu.

Grasp the user's pain points

Robin Li revealed that the second secret of Baidu's transformation is to be down-to-earth and analyze users' pain points from the users' perspective.

This is a challenge for Baidu, which is known for its engineering culture. "Many geeks are engineers by profession, and engineers have a big obstacle in being down-to-earth. Usually they talk about problems from the perspective of writing programs and codes, so they think they have expressed themselves clearly, rigorously, without any loopholes, and that they have considered even the one in ten thousand problem, but users find it incomprehensible and difficult to use," said Robin Li.

On the one hand, we need to understand how technology happens and the feasibility of its implementation. On the other hand, we need to understand the needs of users who don’t understand technology. Although this requirement does not sound too excessive, Li Yanhong admits that "it is very, very difficult to do."

“Once you understand something, you will naturally want to describe it in a professional way. It is very important that you understand it and can immediately clear your mind and look at the problem in a way that you don’t understand.”

Therefore, we must not only understand technology, have faith in technology, and utilize the power of technology, but also be able to look at things from the perspective of an ordinary user. This is not only an experience of Baidu's transformation in the past two years, but also a principle that Baidu has always adhered to in its development over the past decade.

Sacrificing short-term interests

Baidu's latest financial report (third quarter of 2014) shows that Baidu's profit margin is 29%; if we go back two years, the profit margin in the third quarter of 2012 was 53%.

"In just two years, the profit margin has dropped so much. This actually shows a kind of determination, that is, I am willing to spend money and I am willing to invest. I don't care what Wall Street thinks. I don't care if my stock price will drop by half or more. I must get this done." Li Yanhong said that the investment in the past two years played a big role in Baidu's smooth transition.

Behind the huge investment in research and development, Li Yanhong admitted that the most important thing is determination.

"Because China's Internet industry is relatively new, most Internet company CEOs are still founders, but some have become professional managers. In fact, even if you have money, professional managers usually don't dare to make such decisions. His profit margin dropped from 53% to 29%, and the board of directors said it was time to replace him. So having money is useless, and they don't dare to do this at all."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.