Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

For a businessman, the first and only thing that comes to mind is profit.

After a conversation lasting more than ten minutes, the two came to a preliminary agreement on their competitive strategy, and Chen Yansen hung up.

Next, he called Lei Yijun, Ma Wenteng, and Zhang Chaoyang.

When Little Ma heard they would be cooperating with Zhou Hongyi, he looked as disgusted as if he’d swallowed a fly. But out of respect for Chen Yansen, he reluctantly nodded in agreement.

After hearing the plan, Zhang Chaoyang thought for a moment before replying, ”Sogou can’t participate in things like traffic hijacking, data scraping, one-click copying of Qian Du’s content, or fighting for their ad agents. But since you’re the one asking, President Chen, Sogou will stand on the same side as Lingxi and 360.”

Chen Yansen was slightly taken aback. ’Old Zhang seems so unassuming,’ he thought, ’but the moment he opens his mouth, you can tell he’s full of cunning tricks.’

The man’s ambiguous statement was clearly a way of suggesting underhanded tactics.

”Thanks. I’ll buy you a drink sometime,” Chen Yansen said with a smile.

”I didn’t say a thing,” Zhang Chaoyang said, waving his hand dismissively.

Chen Yansen put down his phone, opened his computer, and assigned a few tasks to Zhang Yiming.

That afternoon, Lingxi, 360, Sohu, and Penguin formed a temporary ”Search Engine Alliance” with a single goal: to kick Qian Du Search off its throne as the industry’s number one.

Li Yanhong had held that position for far too long.

Chen Yansen’s idea was simple: expand the battlefront, drag Qian Du’s core business into the fray, and hit Li Yanhong where it truly hurt. Only then would he learn to be afraid.

He wanted this to be a vicious slap across Li Yanhong’s face.

By evening, when users of Lingxi Browser, 360 Browser, QQ Browser, or Sogou Browser tried to enter Qian Du’s URL, they would either get a network error or be automatically redirected to the browser’s native search engine homepage.

For users, it was a familiar feeling all over again.

It was clear that a silent war was being waged in the search engine industry.

The next morning, Li Yanhong had just sat down at his office when he glanced at the data backend and noticed something was wrong.

Qian Du Search’s daily active users on both PC and mobile had dropped, and even its advertising revenue had seen a small decline.

He immediately summoned the heads of the data department and the search division.

”Boss, I’m seeing user feedback on social media. When they use 360 Browser and type in our official address, it automatically redirects to 360 Search.”

Li Shuo said, his expression grim.

”Is Zhou Hongyi acting up again?” Li Yanhong shot back.

Last November, all the mainstream search engine companies had signed the ”Pact for Self-Regulation in Internet Search Engine Services” in Yanjing. Zhou Hongyi’s move was a blatant show of disrespect to the Information Association and the Internet Association.

’How dare he?’ Li Yanhong wondered.

In truth, Zhou Hongyi wouldn’t be foolish enough to act alone. But this time, he had Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng, and Zhang Chaoyang on his side.

There was safety in numbers. The worst they would get afterward was a scolding. If 360 could snatch even 5% of the market share, it would be a huge windfall.

”Lingxi Browser, QQ Browser, and Sogou Browser are doing the same thing,” the director of the data department added quietly.

Li Yanhong’s brow furrowed, his eyes blazing with fury.

He was a smart man and quickly deduced who the mastermind was.

’That son of a bitch Chen Yansen,’ he fumed. ’The battle between Senlian Capital and Qian Du Network is supposed to be in group buying, food delivery, and ride-hailing. What’s the big idea, attacking my search business?’

Li Yanhong was starting to panic.

To put it bluntly, the O2O business didn’t account for a high percentage of revenue. The biggest losses there were in marketing costs.

The search business was a different story. It accounted for a whopping 80% of their revenue, making it the group’s primary income stream. If it was impacted, Qian Du’s stock price would surely take a hit.

During the 3B War last August, Qian Du’s market value had evaporated by several billion US dollars in a single day.

Li Yanhong had to be on guard.

He thought for a moment, then took out his phone and made a few calls. After hearing their promises, Li Yanhong couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

’Senlian Capital, Penguin, 360, and Sohu are powerful,’ he thought, ’but would they dare to go against the authorities?’

What he didn’t know, however, was that the Information Association and the Internet Association simply paid lip service. After hanging up, they tossed their phones aside and did nothing.

From the perspective of the higher-ups, Qian Du Network’s dominance in the search sector, where it held 60% to 70% of the market share, ran counter to the regulatory trend against internet monopolies.

Although Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng, Zhou Hongyi, and Zhang Chaoyang had not received any official directive, their actions were aligned with the needs of the times.

When, by the third day, no reprimanding calls had come from the regulators, Zhou Hongyi had a revelation. He immediately intensified his attack, completely blocking all of Qian Du’s products within his company’s software ecosystem.

He then convened a conference for channel partners, pushed a Cost Per Sale (CPS) advertising model, and began aggressively poaching Qian Du’s agents, unscrupulously carrying out his plan to tear them out by the roots.

He was stealing users on one front and poaching agents on the other.

Lingxi Search, Penguin, and Sogou Search also launched similar advertising policies to lure away Qian Du’s agents.

Chen Yansen’s move was the classic ”kill ten thousand enemies, but lose eight hundred of your own men.”

The single blow left Li Yanhong completely stunned.

At this point, he had no time to worry about anything else. He scrambled to increase loyalty training for his agents and strengthen regional controls in an attempt to stabilize his agency network.

But what loyalty could one expect from businessmen?

Agents would flock to whoever offered lower fees, more users, and an easier way to make money.

While the top-tier agents looked down on Lingxi, Penguin, and Sogou Search, the mid- and low-tier agents, along with those who had been dropped for failing to meet KPIs, were all snapped up by the three companies.

Zhou Hongyi was the most ruthless of them all. To secure agents, he even offered commission rebates of 30-40%.

Normally, when a business bought ad credits for Qian Du’s system, it went through an agent, who would earn a 15-25% commission.

Lao Zhou came in and immediately doubled that rate.

He refused to believe there was anyone who didn’t love money.

As it turned out, Zhou Hongyi’s tactics were precise and vicious, leaving Li Yanhong completely overwhelmed.

Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng, and Wang Xiaochuan followed suit, using low prices to aggressively woo Qian Du Network’s service agents.

CNZZ, a third-party monitoring agency highly sensitive to traffic fluctuations, released a report on industry data changes on May 8th.

Before the war began, the traffic market share was: Qian Du at 66.4%, 360 Search at 8.5%, Lingxi at 8.3%, Sogou at 7.1%, and Penguin at 1.4%.

Three days later, it was: Qian Du at 59.4%, Lingxi at 9.7%, 360 Search at 8.9%, Sogou at 7.3%, and Penguin at 1.6%.

Sogou and Penguin were more passive, acting like minions cheering from the sidelines.

Lingxi and 360 were the most ferocious.

The media dubbed this search engine conflict the ”3SB War.”

The ”3” represented 360, the ”S” represented Senlian Capital, and the ”B” represented Qian Du.

On May 8th, as soon as the stock market in the Lighthouse Country opened, Qian Du Network’s stock price immediately dropped. It opened at 87.3 US dollars per share and fell to 82.6 US dollars in less than ten minutes.

Investors across the ocean got the news as well. With Qian Du Network’s situation looking grim, many chose to sell off their stock.

By the market’s close, Qian Du Network’s stock price had fallen below 80 US dollars a share, and its market capitalization had shrunk by 2.2 billion US dollars.

Only three days had passed since Chen Yansen initiated the ”3SB War.”

The next morning, Lingxi Search added an artificial intelligence module to its homepage, which could be considered a combination of search and a rudimentary language model.

Compared to the competing products that would emerge over a decade later, this little plug-in, named ”Moss,” was actually quite rudimentary.

But it changed the face of search engine services in 2013.

Previously, when users searched for a question, they had to find the answer within the search results page. ”Moss,” however, gave the answer directly.

Although Moss’s performance was lacking when faced with complex questions, it was almost 100% accurate when answering simple, common-knowledge questions.

If a user felt the answer was wrong, they could still browse the search results page themselves and hunt for the answer among the myriad web pages.

Moreover, Moss’s answer interface was clean and tidy, with none of the annoying ads people hated.

Through content seeding on platforms like Toutiao, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, and with exposure from Aurora Future, the Orange Application Mall, and Lingxi Browser, Lingxi Search—now equipped with the ”Moss” plug-in—was like a tiger that had grown wings.

In the second week of May, its market share soared, quickly approaching 13%. Meanwhile, Qian Du Network’s market capitalization had evaporated by nearly 4 billion US dollars, a drop of over 15%.

「At the same time.」

Qian Du was repeatedly suffering losses in the group buy, food delivery, and ride-hailing markets. They were spending money, but not getting the results Li Yanhong wanted.

Senlian Capital had Qian Du pinned down and was beating it like a child.

For the first time, their peers in the domestic internet industry realized that perhaps Qian Du and Senlian Capital weren’t in the same league at all.

’Qian Du should be kicked out of the ”BAT” trio!’

Seeing that the authorities weren’t intervening, Li Yanhong decided to start his own blockade. Any product under Senlian Capital or 360 became unsearchable within Qian Du’s ecosystem.

He chose to ignore Penguin and Sogou.

He was mainly afraid that if he made too many enemies, Qian Du Network wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure.

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”13.1%? This is only the beginning,” Chen Yansen said to Zhang Yiming over the phone.