Baidu Search For 20 Years: AI Opens New Era

In January 1, 2000, Baidu was founded in Zhongguancun, Beijing. In the past 20 years, search has always been Baidu's core business line.

Nowadays, the search box has become the infrastructure of national life. The frame contains hundreds of billions of Chinese web pages, where people search for information and knowledge, connect demand and services. In the past 20 years, the box has never changed, but the evolution of the search box has never stopped.

In the era of PC, Baidu, with its pioneers' attitude, broke the barriers of information acquisition, enabling users to acquire knowledge and information on an equal and convenient basis. On the other hand, as a huge flow entry, it opens up a new path for enterprise development. "Once you know Baidu," you know from now on, "Baidu" is a noun and a verb in people's mind.

The coming of the mobile era is an impact on Baidu search, and it is also a driving force. The problem of information island caused by the rise of APP promotes Baidu to continuously improve its content ecology and improve user search experience. Hundred homes and intelligent small programs become the focus, providing more quality content and services, and providing more suitable traffic scenarios for many entrepreneurs. Baidu sticks to the attitude of reformers and uses the thinking of business integration, because "times are changing all the time, but people's demand for search is always there".

At that time, the needle pointed to the next 10 years. Artificial intelligence is a representative new technology without controversy. As a domestic search engine giant, Baidu is stabilizing its traditional search business, and is making the search breakthrough "box" restrictions, extending from mobile phones to smart speakers, smart cars and other scenarios. Robin Li, founder and chairman of the Baidu Inc and CEO, said: "in the era of AI, the platform of human-machine interaction is far more than mobile phones. Many devices do not have screens, so search must be intelligent enough to give the only answer."

Constructing content ecology

"In retrospect of Baidu's 20 years, I feel that there are both changes and invariable things." An early employee who worked in Baidu for 10 years recalled to reporters.

In his view, the same thing is simple. In the process of user information search and information consumption, Baidu always targets users' needs. The needs of users will not remain unchanged, so changes have also been accompanied by the development of Baidu.

In 2009, Baidu, which is still in the PC era, has great channel power, including Baidu encyclopedia, Baidu know, Baidu library, Baidu post bar and so on. Its own knowledge system is also absolutely strong. Subsequently, the PC era began to migrate to the mobile era. By the year 2014, the share of mobile search has surpassed PC for the first time.

"In the mobile era, what kind of product styles we use, what characteristics and what kind of interaction to meet user needs are very big challenges for us." The aforementioned staff sighed.

Since the beginning of 2013, Baidu has divided the past basic needs into ten categories, including sports, automobiles, mother and baby, and so on. This enables Baidu to understand the scene more deeply from the industry, thereby mining more subdivided user needs.

Overall, however, in the past, Baidu's ecology only satisfied the starting point of users and advertisers, and did not meet the end point. Baidu needs to pay more attention to users and products, and do well in service after starting point, so that users can have a better experience while enabling customers to better serve users.

Therefore, after 2017, Baidu is trying to build a new content and service ecosystem, a prominent representative is the smart applet. It is understood that the smart applet is a strategic grade product launched by Baidu in July 2018. It adapts to the changing trend of user demand in the mobile Internet era.

For example, when searching for popular movies, users not only want to get the introduction of movies, but also the potential demand for online booking and seat selection. Prior to this, Baidu could only satisfy users' need to view the video information, but after having the smart applet, Baidu could already turn the search needs of users to purchase needs, from "connecting people and information" to "connecting people and services".

This also means that the smart applet helps Baidu build a brand new ecosystem, achieving user satisfaction from the starting point to the end. Data show that by the end of November 2019, AI active small monthly active users reached 300 million, the number of small programs reached 300 thousand, covering 271 sub categories, and Baidu App's daily activity has also exceeded 200 million.

Baidu has spared no effort to invest in content barriers. In addition to the layout of Iqiyi and Himalaya, FM, dragonfly FM and many other content partners, Baidu is also stepping up its related investments, including this year's blockbuster investment.

"The company's content strategy is to make content more suitable for users to use in Baidu App. If any project can meet this requirement, we will invest. We do not care whether these contents are visible on the PC side. Of course, if content is provided only on mobile terminals, we will invest. " Robin Li said.

The change to users has made more and more users start using Baidu mobile products frequently. Data from QuestMobile show that during the 9 and October of this year, the total growth of Baidu mobile products (including Baidu App, Baidu SkyDrive, good-looking video, etc.) increased by 29% and 31% respectively, leading to headlines, Tencent, Alibaba and other Internet Co.

Intelligent search Era

Content ecology is the foundation of user experience, so what kind of imagination can we have in the form of user experience?

In fact, as the advanced technology represented by AI has been maturing, the technical threshold of search has also been continuously upgraded to intelligent search.

An early technical employee of Baidu said that in the past, the role of Baidu was the one-way flow of information, that is, content producers released information, Baidu gathered information as platforms, and users acquired information on the platform. Now, Baidu has begun to enhance the substantive communication and interaction with users.

"The changes that Aladdin and box computing have brought to search is more about the combination of product and technology," the employee said. "But before and after 2014, the application of large-scale deep learning in search, including recommendation technology used in search, is an important time point."

Deep learning and recommendation technology are the tentacles of the current artificial intelligence technology. It makes the search system change from simply meeting user needs to "satisfying + stimulating" two parts.

From a set of data, we can see the relationship between artificial intelligence technology and search. Statistics show that Baidu's first search satisfaction rate increased from 16% in 2017 to 37% in 2018, and increased to 56% in the third quarter of 2019. Baidu APP can automatically identify more than 10 million items and 30+ scenes, and it can also achieve the same functions, price, jump to the purchase of electronic business platform and other functions.

It should be noted that today's search is far more than mobile phone. In Robin Li's view, intelligent search has broken through the "box" restrictions, extending from mobile phones to smart speakers, smart cars and other scenes, and will become a ubiquitous super intelligent interaction portal. Future search will become ubiquitous.

In this regard, Baidu is also prepared. It is understood that Baidu has launched an artificial intelligence voice assistant DuerOS since 2015. Through DuerOS, users can search or access online functions such as delivery, driving service and streaming media. Last year, DuerOS's voice query increased by more than four times over the previous year, reaching 4 billion 200 million times.

The value of DuerOS is more than extending the form of search from text to speech. In fact, it built a huge ecosystem composed of mobile applications, smart cars, household appliances and smart speakers. This also means that Baidu search is becoming a ubiquitous super intelligent interaction portal.

"The form of search in the future will continue to change, and its market size will far exceed many people's imagination." Robin Li said, "we will always commit ourselves to the best search."