Baidu has recently set up a limelight company and an investment company, so what is the gap between Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba in the investment field?

The investment fields before and after Alibaba's listing are very different: the investment style before listing is all kinds of buying, and Alibaba spent 6 billion? 7 billion US dollars, invested in or acquired 36 companies. On average, each company can get 6,543.8 billion yuan from Alibaba. From the scope, these 36 companies are so widely distributed that there is almost no organization: Sina Weibo, Momo, UC Browser, Youmeng, Meituan, Junyou.com, Zailu, tintin network, Kuaida Taxi, Gaode Map and Youku Tudou? Covers almost every field of Internet and mobile Internet; After listing, Ma Yun is very persistent in positioning his investment field in cultural media, and Alibaba ecosystem has even become the basis for maintaining social operation. The risk of doing so is that once the whole ecosystem is overloaded and collapses, it will bring harm not only to enterprises and entrepreneurs, but also to the whole society. Besides money and guns, public opinion and ideas are one of the best tools to control risks.

Compared with Alibaba, Tencent's investment M&A layout has two obvious main lines, one is O2O (online and offline integration business), and the other is games. Behind the two main lines are the two backbones of Tencent's "big tree"-WeChat and mobile QQ.

Let's look at O2O first. In 20 14, Tencent invested and acquired more than 10 related companies in the field of O2O. In addition to cash, Tencent also paid the WeChat portal that was deified by many people. For Tencent, although WeChat can't directly generate value, it was born in the era of mobile Internet, and the offline life scene is closer. It is the best connector for connecting online and offline. The most typical is JD.COM. In 20 14, the order volume in JD.COM reached 689 million yuan, up by 1 13% year-on-year. After Tencent injected capital and connected to WeChat platform, the mobile orders in JD.COM increased rapidly. In the fourth quarter, mobile orders increased by an astonishing 372% year-on-year, and the traffic introduced by WeChat contributed greatly.

Therefore, Tencent's investment is not so much around the layout of WeChat, but rather that many Internet companies are chasing Tencent and hope to obtain Tencent's "strategic investment". Another mainline game is closely related to Tencent's current business income (blog, Weibo). In 20 14, Tencent's annual revenue was 78.932 billion yuan, of which online game revenue was 44.756 billion yuan, more than half of the country. It is not an exaggeration to call Tencent a game company.

For Baidu, in Li Yanhong's own words: Baidu should resolutely be a tool, not seeking holding, and pay more attention to cultivating ecology than holding; There is no division of camps and labels, most companies are independent companies, and the cooperative relationship is equal and open; Every industry has something to do well. Baidu is a universal platform with 3600 lines. In the future, we will connect more outstanding people in 3600 lines, and we are not afraid of being washed away by users. This was interpreted by some insiders as "Li Yanhong's revision of Baidu's past wholly-owned or holding investment style". In terms of investment, over the past year or so, Baidu has a soft spot for foreign technology innovation companies, including Pixellot, a video capture technology developer from Israel, and IndoorAtlas, a Finnish indoor navigation technology service company. This makes Baidu look more like a well-planned internet company, but its ability to resist risks is relatively weak.