Internet services are permeating every industry. Because of the demographic, economic and policy dividends, China has staged a unique "internet plus" phenomenon in the world, and many traditional industries, such as tourism, catering, payment and retail, have been overtaken by this curve.
The golden age of the internet
According to the data, in 20 16, the total revenue of listed internet companies in China exceeded one trillion yuan, up by 4 1.5% year-on-year, and the scale of the industry continued to expand, with the growth rate much higher than 6.7% of GDP and 5.6% of basic telecommunications industry in the same period. Internet has become a veritable sunrise industry.
The fast-growing Internet industry has the characteristics of high added value, fair and transparent competition, environmental protection and serving people's livelihood, and has received more and more official support. Internet plus, artificial intelligence and big data have all been incorporated into the national strategy, and the growth of the Internet industry is still accelerating.
The rapid growth of the internet industry has made capital flock. In the second quarter of this year alone, the financing amount of Internet industry in China reached US$ 6,543.8+03.5 billion yuan, an increase of 86.2% from the previous month. Even the hot money from coal bosses poured into this industry and started a new project like * * * enjoying bicycles.
The Internet industry has also become a "black hole" for talents. Whether it is employment or entrepreneurship, the Internet has become the hottest industry. According to the report released by CIIC, among the 20 17 graduates interviewed, 20% expect to enter the Internet industry, far exceeding the 10% of the second financial industry. This industry is not only high in gold content and relatively fair in competition, but also looks lower, more dynamic and more interesting than traditional industries.
There are more and more top Internet companies in China. In the past two years, the stock market has set a new historical record. In May, Tencent's market value exceeded $300 billion for the first time, exceeding most people's expectations when it entered the global market value 10. However, as I said in "Tencent's market value exceeded $300 billion for the first time! It's not just the employees and shareholders of Goose Factory who want to open champagne. The good times of the Internet industry have just begun.
Five months later, Ali's latest market value has reached $457,654.38+billion, less than 654.38+0% from Amazon, the global e-commerce boss. Tencent's market value is US$ 408.8 billion, which is nearly US$ 654.38+0 billion different from the global social leader Facebook's US$ 506.5438+0 billion, but catching up is also a high probability event-and the market values of Ali and Tencent are both before the global market value 10. It's not just Ali and Tencent that are outstanding. Baidu's share price is about to hit a record high. The market value of Weibo is nearly twice that of Twitter ... Internet companies in China are constantly creating new possibilities.
Moreover, the internet industry has not shown signs of aging until now. New industrial waves, such as mobile Internet, internet plus, content entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence, keep creating new possibilities. It can be said that today is the golden age of Internet in China.
The worst era of the internet
Where there is light, there is darkness. On the surface, the Internet industry is bright and energetic, but it never lacks negative news. Even to a certain extent, today is the worst time for the Internet in China.
Just as Alibaba's market value is about to surpass Amazon, two other entrepreneurs stand up and accuse a team of Ali Health, a subsidiary of Ali, for allegedly copying entrepreneurs' ideas through cooperation. Alibaba's first response showed that the fact of copywriting plagiarism did exist. Ali immediately removed the relevant functions, apologized to the partners, and dealt with the employees involved.
Before Alibaba, the news that Internet companies and entrepreneurs in China copied each other was endless. For example, Tencent was criticized and plagiarized by the outside world. An article in Computer World, Tencent in Dog Day, even branded Tencent as a "public enemy" of the Internet. It was not until after the 3Q War that Tencent began its opening strategy and began to take off. However, the pace of plagiarism in the Internet industry has not stopped. Every once in a while, there is a war of words about accusing plagiarism-some are true, and many are porcelain marketing.
The plagiarism of products, patterns, copywriting and even codes is just a kind of disharmony. On the same day, the recording of today's headline advertising salespeople maliciously clicking on Baidu advertisements to threaten a business owner was released, which also shocked the industry: It turns out that today's Internet advertising salespeople in China are so ignorant and have nothing to hide? However, this is only an example. Malicious competition has emerged in almost every profitable Internet industry, and it is getting worse. Some people even risk breaking the law.
The openness that the Internet once valued most is increasingly rare. The interconnected, decentralized, collaborative and shared network built by Tim Berners Lee, the father of the Internet, is being disintegrated by super applications. Foreign Apple AppStore has built its own closed content ecosystem. Domestic Ali and Tencent blocked each other for several years. Wechat, Today's Headlines, Baidu and UC are all building their own "walls", trying to keep content, traffic, data and users within their own walls. Super application makes it more and more difficult for search engines based on open internet to obtain data and content. Feeling the profound crisis, Baidu launched the information flow strategy and established its own content ecology.
China's Internet industry has made remarkable achievements. However, it has gradually drifted away from the original intention of "openness, equality, cooperation and sharing" when designing the Internet. Plagiarism, malicious competition, and closure are becoming common problems of the Internet in China.
Google's value of "don't be evil" is regarded as the highest criterion of internet companies' self-demand and the universal value of the industry. However, how many companies can do "no evil"? Mercenary enterprises operate above the law and under morality. It can be said that the Internet industry in China has reached the worst time.
It is precisely because of this that Alibaba apologized for copywriting plagiarism, and today's headlines directly fired improper sales. In my opinion, it is already a good performance. Doing so shows that they still have a moral bottom line. Today's headlines deeply blame themselves for threatening advertisers with sales, and even show "corporate conscience." After all, many companies often behave like ostriches when they encounter similar situations-as long as people don't break the law, what can you do with it except scold?
The Innovation Era of Internet
The achievements made by the Internet industry in China today can be said to be hard-won.
On the one hand, it is not easy for China's Internet to grow to today's level. Unlike many traditional industries, the Internet in China has grown from the bottom up. In the free market, grassroots entrepreneurial groups lead the industrial development. Twenty years later, they are still full of vitality and constantly produce innovations like WeChat payment and Sesame Credit. It can be said that along the way, many sub-sectors of the Internet industry, such as online media, mobile payment, WeChat and Internet TV, may be strangled in the cradle at any time and eventually become irreplaceable.
On the other hand, it is not easy to form the global status of China's Internet. As we all know, the Internet in China has taken the road of C2C(Copy to China) in the past few decades, and almost all well-known Internet applications can find its shadow in the United States. Later, the word "micro-innovation" was invented to beautify plagiarism. However, in recent years, the Internet in China has successfully removed the label of "plagiarism", just as Ma, the head of Tencent, was criticized for plagiarism. He said: CFC (copied from China) is popular now. Wechat, * * * enjoy cycling, Mo Mo, rookie ... There are more and more innovations in China's Internet business model and product functions, which have attracted worldwide attention. Internet companies in China are replicating these innovative models around the world through global expansion.
The Internet in China has a certain atmosphere of innovation, but we should not be complacent. Only by continuous innovation can we maintain its vitality, not only surpassing the Silicon Valley Internet giants in market value, but leading the global Internet industry through innovation and competing with Google for users in the global market. To maintain innovation, we must have an innovative environment. How can we create a good innovation environment?
The first is to improve the Internet supervision mechanism.
Treat every enterprise as a "bad enterprise" and prevent enterprises from destroying the innovation environment and vicious competition through the system. In the hardware industry, the patent system effectively protects originality, thus creating a mature innovation environment. The threshold of software patent application is low, and it is not enough to protect originality only by patent, which is likely to curb internet innovation; In addition, Internet innovation is not a single proposition. For example, whether it is open or not directly determines the innovation environment. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the regulatory system to ensure that Internet companies attach importance to innovation, including but not limited to patents. 18 the establishment of the first internet court in Hangzhou is a positive signal to improve the internet supervision mechanism.
Second, Internet companies should take on more responsibilities.
Internet companies and technology companies in China are paying more and more attention to innovation, not just slogans, but real money. The most typical one is Huawei. In 20 16, Huawei invested 76.4 billion yuan (1/us $0/billion) in R&D, accounting for 14.85%, second only to Qualcomm, Intel, Facebook and Oracle Bone Inscriptions.
Huawei has gained a lot by paying attention to the investment in bottom-level R&D. Not only has the communication equipment business surpassed Ericsson to tie Cisco, but it has also become the first in China to invest huge amounts in bottom-level technologies such as chips, which is almost equal to Samsung.
Internet companies and BAT are both strengthening their investment in the underlying innovation. For example, Alibaba, who was accused of plagiarism, started the NASA project on 20 17 and participated in the establishment of Zhijiang Laboratory, all of which showed its strong investment in the underlying technology.
But judging from Alibaba's plagiarism, it is not enough to invest only real money. Internet giants should have the awareness of respecting innovation and awe of originality and intellectual property rights, and implement this awareness and awe into the company's business processes, management systems and corporate culture.
After the "plagiarism" incident, Zhang Jianfeng, CTO of Alibaba, posted on the intranet that "Alibaba will check all products and functions jointly developed with third parties on the platform, and reorganize and design the business processes and product design specifications that cooperate with all external developers."
Not only Alibaba needs to do this, but all big Internet companies, entrepreneurs and even Internet investors need to do this, because Ali is not the only one who makes the mistake of "plagiarism". For the whole Internet industry, it is urgent to respect and protect originality and encourage and promote innovation.
At the same time, Internet giants should be more open, instead of constantly weaving "fences" to encircle users, data, content and traffic. Tencent Music and Ali Music have reached a copyright mutual authorization agreement, which is a good start.
Third, respect originality and advocate innovation, starting from you and me.
The innovation environment of Internet is not only the innovation of software, but also the innovation of content, service and commodity. When you accused Alibaba of copying entrepreneurs and so-and-so enterprises didn't respect originality, did you ever review whether there were pirated movies on your hard disk? Is there a pirated App on the mobile phone? Do you have imitation furniture at home? If so, there is no essential difference between your practice and an enterprise that doesn't respect originality.
Why do countries with developed music markets rarely pirate? Not because no one does piracy, but because most users will think that piracy is stealing and shameful, rather than taking it for granted.
Today, China's consumer awareness is awakening, paying more and more attention to originality and innovation, and the original environment is getting better and better. Video, music and other industries have ushered in spring. It is believed that the originality in the field of cultural content will spread to software, design and other fields, making the whole Internet innovation environment better and better, and finally making China's Internet industry lead the world.