During Song Weiyang's participation in the beverage festival, big news was exposed in China's Internet industry.

Sogou spent 15 million yuan, plus 30,000 shares of Sogou shares, in exchange for 95% of the shares of "hao123". At the same time as the deal was reached, Ding Ming followed Song Weiyang's suggestion and hired Li Xinping, the webmaster of "hao123", as the deputy director of Sogou's "Internet Product Department".

Due to Ding Ming's encouragement, the news became a sensation, and Li Xinping was made into a grassroots hero in the IT industry, inspiring countless newcomers to devote themselves to the Internet tide.

is really a grassroots hero, a grassroots through and through, because Li Xinping only has the first basis!

This dude can be described as a teenager who has achieved nothing, a typical problem child. Introverted, doesn't like to talk, obsessed with the Internet, didn't study in high school but went to be a network administrator, chatting and playing games in Internet cafes all day long, until he was hired by Sogou, he never even left the small county town in his hometown.

But it is such a dumpling with no education, no vision, and no pursuit, and the navigation website he made in the Internet café actually sold for a high price of more than 10 million yuan, and he also became the vice president of Sogou's department.

The media loves to report this kind of news, and the general public also likes to listen to this kind of story, Li Xinping's magical experience is completely in line with people's definition of grassroots heroes!

"hao123" used to have no search bar, because Li Xinping was a 100% rookie when he first became a network administrator, and he knew very well how rookies went online, and he believed that more than 60% of Chinese netizens were rookies - countless young people who walked into Internet cafes because of curiosity, countless elementary school students who just bought computers, and those middle-aged and elderly people who can only use a mouse to operate. When they go online, they either can't remember the URL, or they don't bother to type the URL, or they don't know how to type the URL, they don't know what a search engine is, and they don't even know how to use their browser favorites.

In the eyes of these netizens, what Baidu, what Sogou, are all shit, and the navigation website is the greatest!

Li Xinping put thousands of websites into "hao123" in different categories, and rookies only need to click with the mouse. And as a network administrator, he knows the basic needs of netizens, and he has all kinds of popular or unpopular website links, including strange websites with colors.

In terms of traffic alone, in 2003, China's navigation website, "hao123" ranked first, "256", which was only founded this year, ranked second, and the most famous "37" could only rank third. Historically, "hao123" was acquired by Baidu, and it contributed 40% of Baidu's traffic in the second year (there are also reasons why Baidu vigorously promotes it).

Now Ding Ming is forced to fight back, Sogou acquired "hao123" at a premium, and its homepage immediately has an additional search bar, which is specifically for Sogou to drain traffic.

After the news was exposed, Baidu tried to acquire "37", but was directly scolded back by the cardinal leader, because the red-clothed leader felt insulted. Immediately, Baidu negotiated with "256" and obtained 80% of the shares of "256" at a price of 12 million yuan, making it clear that it would fight with Sogou.

The contradiction between the two sides became white-hot and public, and a search war broke out, which was also called the "dog war" by the media!

Baidu, which is super short of money, made concessions in the third round of financing and received a $20 million investment, of which Yahoo alone invested $10 million. However, at the same time as the equity concession, Mr. Li Yanhong was very tough and used the "AB shares" model to firmly control the company's decision-making power.

The cardinal sect leader was extremely angry, and directly canceled the search bar on the homepage of "37", and no search engine was used. It's like Don Quixote holding his horse gun high and aiming at the two windmills (Sogou hao123) and (Baidu 256) to charge to the death.

Sogou and Baidu both ignored 37, frantically promoting their own navigation websites and blocking the search results of other navigation stations. The red-clothed leader couldn't bear this, and stood up as the leader of the martial arts alliance in the navigation industry, uniting more than 20 navigation websites to sue Sogou and Baidu for unfair competition. The lawsuit lasted for more than a year, and before the verdict came out, the "Navigation Alliance" collapsed internally.

The red-clothed sect leader fell into a state of incompetence and rage, and in addition to grief and anger, he ran to found 360 and fought happily with the "Jinshan Security Guard".

As for the competition between Sogou and Baidu, it has been launched in all directions -

Among the three major portals, Sohu and NetEase both use Sogou search technology, and only Sina uses Baidu's search technology. However, two of the "three small portals" have cooperated with Baidu, especially the "FM365", a joint venture between AOL and Lenovo, which is completely on Baidu's side, because AOL also invested in Baidu this time.

Other websites, large and small, have also been forced to take sides and have to choose one or the other, or they will be blocked from search. This went too far, and even alarmed the official department, and the heads of Sogou and Baidu were invited to tea, and then each unblocked the enemy website group.

In terms of technology, Baidu implemented the "Lightning Plan" last year, and after several months of research and development, the search speed, search accuracy, and page response speed are better than Sogou.

Sogou's technology comes from Google, and it is Google several years ago, and the follow-up technology is either bought with money or developed by itself. Since the previous main competitor was Yahoo Search, and Yahoo Search was terrible, Sogou's search technology research and development were unhurried and made some achievements, but that's all.

Now that the search technology has been overtaken by Baidu, Ding Ming immediately mobilized elite soldiers and launched a research and development project called "Chasing the Wind Project".

These are actually nothing, the gap is not too big, and the content update rate of Sogou is also better than Baidu.

Baidu's real operation lies in the fact that netizens only need to open Baidu's homepage and enter Chinese characters directly in the address bar, and they can also search for the corresponding results.

This function seems to be useless, but it is actually very useful, let's use a joke to explain: someone is playing a game in an Internet café, and wants to find a game guide, but can't remember the URL, so he uses Sogou to search for the name of the game. He typed Chinese characters in the address bar and found that he couldn't search for it at all, so he was so angry that he changed Baidu to search, and this time it came out all at once. This netizen therefore concluded that Sogou is garbage, Baidu is really awesome!

Including Ding Ming, no one in the whole Sogou thought that someone would enter Chinese characters in the address bar, and the search bar that was so big in the center of the Sogou homepage couldn't be seen?

It turns out that there are a lot of blind people, and there are more than one or two.

Sogou soon added a Chinese character search function in the address bar, and Li Xinping, who had just joined the company, was also transferred to the "Search Project Department" as a consultant. Because Li Xinping has been a network administrator for several years, he has seen all kinds of strange netizens, knows the basic situation of those Internet novices, and knows how to cater to the needs of novices.

In addition, Baidu took the lead in launching an MP3 search and download service, and Sogou immediately followed up, which greatly increased the sales of MP3 in China. And Baidu is also learning from Sogou and has launched Baidu Encyclopedia, anyway, both sides are plagiarizing each other and following the trend.

One night in the fall of 2003.

Li Mingyuan, a 20-year-old junior at Communication University of China, is using his spare time to deal with the "messy" BBS station work. Suddenly, he received a message from the station: "Hello, your BBS station is doing a good job. ”

Li Mingyuan replied casually: "Thank you for your encouragement, I will work harder." ”

The other party said: "My name is Ding Ming, and I am from Sogou." ”

"???????" Li Mingyuan put out a string of question marks.

The other party said: "Sogou is about to launch a product called 'Tieba', and Mr. Song Weiyang, the chairman of the board, visited your BBS station and named you to come over as a product manager." ”

Li Mingyuan was a little confused: "You are really not a liar?"

The other party replied: "Whether it's a liar or not, you will know when you come to Zhongguancun Sohu Building." ”

Of course Li Mingyuan has heard of Sohu Building, which is an office building shared by Sohu and Sogou, is he really favored by Song Weiyang and Ding Ming?

Li Mingyuan said very honestly: "Mr. Ding, I am only 20 years old this year, and I am still in my third year of college, are you sure you want me to be a product manager?"

On the other end of the network cable, Ding Ming suddenly became messy in the wind, called Song Weiyang and said, "Old Song, the person you asked me to dig is only 20 years old this year and is still in his third year." ”

Song Weiyang said with a smile: "No matter how old he is, he manages a BBS station very well, and it is all kinds of innovative excellence, which proves that he is a talent." ”

"Well, listen to you. Ding Ming was speechless.

How could Song Weiyang not know about Li Mingyuan, who was the "Prince of Baidu", the youngest vice president of Baidu, and was once regarded as the successor of Baidu by the outside world. It's a pity that the emperor has been living well, and the prince has made some mistakes again, and he will inevitably be cleaned up.

Historically, Li Mingyuan will be recruited by Baidu to post it in a few months, and it is also because of the BBS station that he is favored. Later, he made products such as Baidu Know and Baidu Encyclopedia, which was less than a year after he graduated from university.

"Come to Sogou for an interview on the weekend. Ding Ming sent another message. 8)