Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

On August 3rd, 360 Search went live.

Zhou Hongyi struck a fighting pose on Weibo, waiting for Li Yanhong to respond so he could hype up the drama.

But Li Yanhong couldn’t be bothered with him, completely ignoring Zhou Hongyi.

Chen Yansen sat in his office, scrolling through Lao Zhou’s comment section. Half of them were from haters.

”President Zhou, how about you teach me how to completely uninstall 360 Wallpaper, and in return, I’ll help you curse out Qian Du?”

”When is 360 releasing a flagship phone?”

”Stop trying to ride his coattails. You think President Li is paying any attention to you?”

Chen Yansen smiled faintly. The internet users of 2012 were sharp-tongued, with every comment striking a nerve with Zhou Hongyi.

It couldn’t be helped. When a former rogue claims he wants to go straight, nobody usually believes him.

Qian Du, relying on its market monopoly, was heavily involved in paid search ranking ads that polluted the quality of its search results. Users had no other choice but to grit their teeth and use it.

One user’s reply was particularly classic and had the most likes: ”You’re always screaming about ’user experience,’ saying the user is your father and your mother. But when it counts, you all turn your backs on your own family, treating your ’parents’ like they’re nothing.”

This statement was a jab at both Li Yanhong and Zhou Hongyi.

Qian Du Search was no good, but did that make 360 Search innocent?

’We’re all rogues here, so why pretend to be the good guy?’

Just then, the phone on his desk rang.

Chen Yansen glanced at the caller ID before pressing the answer and speakerphone buttons.

”Boss, should we launch Lingxi Search ahead of schedule and ride the wave of traffic behind Zhou Hongyi?” Zhang Yiming asked, getting straight to the point.

From May to July, Fast Taxi had burned through four to five hundred million in funds due to the subsidy war.

If Qian Du hadn’t jumped in to spoil things, Today Capital, given its investment style, would never have participated in DiDi Dache’s Series B funding round.

At that point, Cheng Wei would have had to either shut down his product or sell it to Fast Taxi.

Li Yanhong’s move had severely hampered Fast Taxi’s expansion, so naturally, Chen Yansen had to cause him some trouble in return.

The day after Qian Du announced its investment in DiDi Dache, Chen Yansen immediately had Zhang Yiming initiate the Lingxi Search development project.

”Ride their traffic? There’s no need! Lingxi Search isn’t a vassal of 360. We’re not taking sides; we’ll remain independent. If Lingxi’s search quality and algorithms are bug-free, an early launch is fine.”

Chen Yansen replied.

Lingxi Search was built into the Lingxi Browser, giving it a native user base and making it highly defensible. Qian Du couldn’t penetrate it. For every new mobile search user Lingxi gained, Qian Du would lose one.

The same was true for the PC side. In any case, Lingxi Search was the barefoot one, unafraid of those with shoes—its market share was zero.

Even snatching just 5% of the market from Qian Du would be a victory for Chen Yansen.

”The feature tests are okay, and it’s sufficient for users’ daily needs. However, we’re lacking in resources for encyclopedia and Q&A content. If we scrape content from Qian Du, we’ll violate the Robots Exclusion Protocol and could easily get sued.”

Zhang Yiming replied seriously after a moment of thought.

”It doesn’t matter. I’ve looked at infringement cases over the past decade. The highest compensation paid by any single company was only 480,000,” Chen Yansen said in a flat tone.

This silenced Zhang Yiming. He gave a wry, bitter smile. He never would have imagined that to increase user stickiness, Chen Yansen’s operational methods were even wilder than his own.

”Is there a problem?” Chen Yansen asked, raising his voice when he didn’t get a response.

”No problem,” Zhang Yiming agreed, gritting his teeth and bracing himself.

’It’s just the Inspection Institute and the courts, right?’

’It’s not like I haven’t been there before!’

Under Chen Yansen’s direction, Zhang Yiming began to unscrupulously scrape informational content from Qian Du Zhidao, Qian Du Baike, and Tieba, converting it into search results for Lingxi.

In fact, this was exactly what 360 Search was doing too!

So what if they got sued? They could drag it out for a year or two. Compared to gaining market share in search, a fine of a few hundred thousand was peanuts.

Chen Yansen couldn’t care less. After all, the legal representative of Byte Technology was Zhang Yiming. If the bigwigs up top couldn’t stand it anymore, Zhang Yiming would be the one to suffer.

On its first day live, 360 Search leveraged the traffic advantages of the 360 Browser and its navigation site to rapidly seize search market share, rocketing from 0 to 1.09%.

Over half of Google Search’s Chinese traffic came from 360’s navigation site. After Zhou Hongyi changed the default search engine to 360 Search, Google bore the brunt of it, immediately losing 16.7% of its market share in Hua Country.

At that moment, Liu Yun, the head of Google’s Great China Region, was completely baffled and couldn’t help but curse out loud, ’Isn’t 360 supposed to be fighting Qian Du? Why is the gun pointed at Google’s head?’

On the first day of the battle between 360 and Qian Du Search, Qian Du was unscathed, while Google was left black and blue.

On the second day, 360 Search’s market share rose to 2.63%.

On the third day, 360 Search’s market share rose to 3.91%.

Li Yanhong was getting antsy. He felt that Zhou Hongyi’s offensive was a bit too fierce, but if 360 wanted to do search, could he really stop them?

On August 6th, Lingxi Search quietly launched without any announcement. Leveraging the 30 million-plus users of the Lingxi Browser, it quickly carved out a private plot of land for itself.

On August 7th, 360 Search’s market share rose to 5.84%.

Meanwhile, Qian Du also discovered 360’s dirty tricks. 360’s encyclopedia not only plagiarized entries from Qian Du Baike but also openly bypassed the Robots protocol, using Qian Du’s data as its own.

Qian Du immediately responded for the first time on its official Weibo account: ”We welcome competition from our peers, but we oppose unscrupulous acts of infringement.”

It also tagged @Zhou Hongyi, demanding that 360 immediately cease its illegal scraping activities.

Zhou Hongyi saw it, smiled, and pretended he hadn’t. He continued doing as he pleased, even going so far as to block Hao123, a navigation site under Qian Du.

Any user who had 360 Security Guard installed would get an interception prompt when they tried to open the Hao123 navigation site: ”This site may be attempting to steal your personal or financial information.”

The method was shameless, but the effect was remarkable.

After 360’s meddling, Hao123’s traffic for the day immediately dropped by 14.2%.

One had to understand that in 2012, 360 Security Guard’s install base was as high as 470 million, meaning this thing was on the computers of almost 80% of all internet users.

Of course, this also included a portion of users who wanted to uninstall it but couldn’t.

Faced with Zhou Hongyi’s rogue tactics, Li Yanhong couldn’t stand it anymore. He immediately launched a counterattack, blocking 360 Search’s access to Qian Du Zhidao, Qian Du Baike, and Tieba. When 360 users clicked on those search results, they were forcibly redirected to Qian Du’s homepage.

Zhou Hongyi reacted quickly as well, replacing all of Qian Du’s products on the 360 navigation site—like Qian Du News, Maps, and MP3—with Toutiao, Gaode Map, and Sogou Music.

The two had completely torn off all pretenses!

Immediately after, Zhou Hongyi posted on Weibo, cursing, ”Qian Du Antivirus is rogue software that users can’t uninstall. The 360 security team will soon create a dedicated plugin for users to uninstall Qian Du Antivirus.”

When Chen Yansen saw Lao Zhou’s post, he couldn’t help but blush for him.

The netizens couldn’t hold it in either!

Everyone knew full well how Zhou Hongyi had made his fortune.

The old rogue was denouncing the big rogue!

Elsewhere in Yanjing, Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan stared at the previous week’s business report, his brows furrowed in a knot.

Although Sogou Search primarily gained traffic through its own browser and paid channels, with little user overlap with 360 and Qian Du, there were still some shared users.

Sogou’s market share had dropped from 7.44% to 7.21%. The decline wasn’t huge, but it still left Wang Xiaochuan deeply annoyed.

He looked down on Qian Du’s monopolistic behavior, but he also despised 360’s rogue conduct.

As Wang Xiaochuan scrolled through the flame war between Zhou Hongyi and Qian Du on Weibo, he curled his lip in disdain. ’Lao Zhou is up to his old tricks. Hype up the public opinion before the product even launches.’

’Win or lose, the important thing is to get his fill of cursing first.’

It was obvious that Zhou Hongyi had reaped the benefits of traffic from the success of the 360 Mobile Phone and was now applying the same playbook to Lei Yijun and Li Yanhong in turn.

”@SogouWangXiaochuan President Wang, say something! If Sogou doesn’t join the fight, its market ranking will drop from second to third!”

”@SohuZhangChaoyang President Zhang, enough with the singing! Get in the fight!”

Wang Xiaochuan laughed and shook his head. After a moment’s thought, he replied: ”360 is 3, Sogou is S, and Qian Du is B. I think it’s better if Sogou doesn’t join the war, otherwise we’d become 3SB!”

Wang Xiaochuan’s sarcastic comment was quoted by many netizens, and the fame of the ”3B Search Engine War” grew louder and louder.

Lingxi Search hid in the background, silently snatching market share from Qian Du Search.

It wasn’t until August 9th, when Lingxi Search’s market share reached 1%, that it finally entered the sights of Qian Du, 360, and Sogou.

After some investigation, Li Yanhong found out that Chen Yansen was the one pulling the strings. With a little thought, he understood his opponent’s intentions.

Setting aside Gaode Map, the ride-hailing war alone was enough to make them enemies.

Chen Yansen had stealthily launched a search business, clearly intending to use a peripheral business to attack Qian Du’s core business.

Zhou Hongyi was the most impatient. Upon learning that Lingxi Search was Chen Yansen’s product, he immediately made a call.

”President Chen, no wonder we get along so well. Turns out we’re kindred spirits,” Zhou Hongyi said with a laugh.

The operations of Lingxi Search and 360 Search were identical; they both completely ignored Qian Du’s Robots protocol and were scraping for all they were worth.

”President Zhou, you’ve misunderstood. It’s mainly because Qian Du Search has too many ads that I decided to make a clean, ad-free search product.”

Chen Yansen answered with a half-truth, casually spinning a tale.

”Want to take down Qian Du together?” Zhou Hongyi extended a team-up invitation.

Chen Yansen gave a knowing smile, talked with Zhou Hongyi for ten minutes, and then hung up the phone.

The business ecosystems of Lingxi Search and Sogou Search were quite similar. They were mainly centered around mobile browser usage, making them highly defensible and with low user overlap with 360 and Qian Du.

Therefore, Chen Yansen politely declined the invitation but provided Zhou Hongyi with a technical solution to bypass Qian Du Search’s blocks. Chen Yansen certainly wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to cause trouble for Li Yanhong.

’Let Zhou Hongyi lead the charge. Lingxi can just lie low in the back and develop quietly.’

Two days later, when 360 users used 360 Search in the 360 Browser to view search results related to Qian Du’s products, they would be redirected to a ’cached page’.

The content was still from Qian Du, but 360 Search intercepted the user, giving no traffic to Qian Du at all.

Pure freeloading, and not paying a damn cent!

On August 12th, Qian Du sent a cease and desist letter to 360.