Baidu has closed the inside story.
Only after more than two years, Baidu will officially die, which also marks the failure of Baidu's strategy of testing water and e-commerce. Some sources pointed out that in fact, as early as more than a year ago, Baidu executives were pessimistic about the business. After the loss of core personnel, Baidu decided to close the business a few months ago. Some analysts said that the closure of Baidu also reflected the total collapse of C2C model.
Baidu broken wrist
In fact, according to Baidu insiders, as early as the end of 2009, Baidu executives had begun to be pessimistic about Baidu's business and decided to transform. "Li Yanhong personally convened a high-level meeting of the business department to express his dissatisfaction and asked the management to come up with a solution. 20 10 1, Li Yanhong has decided to weaken the C2C model and make a transformation. " Baidu insiders said.
20 10 1, Baidu announced the establishment of a joint venture with Lotte Japan to enter B2C, which also marked that Baidu began to change the direction of e-commerce business. Subsequently, Li Mingyuan, general manager of Baidu You Ya, left as a representative.
"Since last year, the core personnel of C2C have gradually lost and adjusted. Some people left their jobs, some were transferred to other departments of Baidu, and some stayed in Baidu and turned to life services. Now there are almost no people in Baidu's founding team, and there are very few operators of C2C projects. " Baidu insiders said.
In the eyes of Baidu employees, it is only a matter of time before Baidu closes C2C business. In fact, Baidu started preparing to close C2C business as early as a few months ago.
Baidu's transformation direction is the "alliance" platform of life service and e-commerce. Cai Hu, general manager of Baidu's e-commerce division, once said in an interview that Baidu has been studying and exploring the seamless connection between search engines, communities and e-commerce in the past few years, and the future forms of e-commerce will be more diversified, more open and more abundant.
Last September, Baidu's friendly life platform was launched, providing users with business information, group purchase, coupons and other services, which also means that Baidu's transformation has achieved initial results.
"In fact, it is a good thing for Baidu to cut C2C business regardless of face. Breaking the wrist in time for a poorly developed business is beneficial to Baidu's future development. " A B2C company executive who did not want to be named said.
Complicated reasons
"In addition to poor performance, the main reasons for cutting C2C business are Baidu's big company, multi-product culture and vacillating mentality." Baidu has, uh, employee disclosure.
In Baidu's overall business line, yes, although the business department is set up specially, it is only a tentative product line of Baidu, and Baidu has not invested too much human and financial resources in research and development and promotion.
In 2007, Baidu began to develop C2C business. In June 2008, 10, Baidu You Ya platform was officially launched. But at that time, Li Xinzhe, CFO of Baidu, said in an interview with Sohu IT that Baidu would not invest too much in C2C, which was lower than the Japanese market. In 2008, Baidu invested $20-25 million in the Japanese market.
Because Baidu's investment in C2C business is small and experimental, it also directly leads to Baidu's lack of advantages in the war with Taobao. Last year, some employees of Baidu complained in their blogs: "When we were faced with a marketing expense of several thousand yuan per month, when we found that there were fewer and fewer commodity web pages on the Internet except Taobao, when we found that the company wanted horses to run and not feed them, everything changed."
In addition, the rise of B2C also makes the psychology of Baidu executives more complicated. On the one hand, Baidu vaguely regretted choosing C2C instead of B2C. On the other hand, due to the competitive relationship between C2C and other B2C malls to some extent and the lack of a better cooperation platform, Baidu lost the opportunity to gain more benefits, which also made Baidu hesitate.
Yesterday, Liu, CEO of Mall, said that he had talked with Baidu several times last year, but in the end no cooperation was reached. He believes that the closure of Baidu may be the best choice, because e-commerce is an alternative application in the Internet, which is completely different from the platform.
Not long ago, Dangdang announced that it would stop advertising on Baidu platform, and JD.COM Mall also announced that the advertising fee would be halved.
"The increase in advertising costs has made many B2C companies unbearable. In order to look better, Baidu ads were cut off. But it also shows from the side that Baidu lacks a platform that is more suitable for cooperation with B2C companies. " Insiders pointed out.
Another voice said that Baidu's decision to cut off YeC2C business was also related to Baifubao's failure to obtain a payment license.
At present, among the 24 third-party payment license publicity enterprises disclosed by the central bank, there is no name of Baifubao. It is reported that on September 1 2065438, the central bank began to implement the Measures for the Administration of Payment Services of Non-financial Institutions, and third-party payment platforms that have obtained the Payment Business License can continue to engage in payment business.
Tang Bin, CEO of Yeepay, said that third-party payment seems easy to enter, but it is difficult to actually do it and get a license. However, he also believes that Baidu's reduction of C2C business is more due to strategic considerations.
C2C mode failed.
The closure of Baidu business is also considered as another evidence of the decline of C2C model.
As early as 2008, Sun Deliang, CEO of NetSheng business treasure, said in an interview with Sohu IT that he didn't think C2C was a good model because he couldn't see a formed business model at all.
Cao Junbo, chief analyst of iResearch and dean of the research institute, also believes that cutting C2C business and turning to B2C is a brighter road for Baidu.
"From the development of these two years, the growth rate of C2C users and sales has lagged far behind that of B2C. C2C is a long tail market, which has market space in the long run, but its development is definitely not as good as B2C. This has been verified by the market. Now, even Taobao, the boss of C2C, has begun to pay attention to B2C. Instead of making efforts to continue to develop C2C, Baidu might as well invest in the B2C field. " Cao Junbo said.