The Li Yanhong "mobile phone smashing incident" mentioned by Su Qingzhi occurred at a board meeting of Baidu not long ago.

In 2001, the IT market situation was still cold, but in China, Baidu basically monopolized the search engine of most portals.

Li Yanhong is a person with a high sense of crisis, and this situation not only did not make him feel at ease, but made him even more anxious.

Because in terms of portals, Baidu basically has no possibility of further improvement, and he can't see where the company's growth point will be next year.

Li Yanhong knows in his heart that Baidu's current development model has reached a bottleneck, and if he does not advance against the current, he must find another way to explore new growth points for Baidu's business next year or even in the next few years, otherwise what awaits Baidu will be an endless winter.

According to Li Yanhong's idea, it is almost impossible to wait for the portal to buy search engine technical services with a lot of money, and to wait is to wait for death, because the cold winter of the Internet has not yet dissipated, and the portal is too busy to take care of itself.

Internet companies are updating and iterating too fast, and how to keep Baidu alive is something that Li Yanhong, the helmsman, must consider.

During this period, he was extremely confused and depressed, and he couldn't even sleep at night, which can be said to be physically and mentally exhausted.

He thought of the search engine monetization model he had always had high hopes for: the company's bidding ranking.

This marketing strategy, which was criticized in his previous life, was conceived by Li Yanhong during this period.

The so-called search PPC service, specifically, is that enterprises register keywords belonging to their own products (i.e., the specific names of products or services) on search engines, and when netizens search for corresponding product information through search engines, information about enterprises will appear in search results.

The ranking is based on the results of the enterprise auction, with the company with the highest bid per click being ranked first.

Statistics show that among the 80 million Chinese Internet users, 87.6% know that the new website is mainly through search engines, and 65% to 70% of Internet users choose the top 10 when they click on the search results.

From this point of view, the higher the ranking, the more likely it is to get customer visits and ultimately lead to sales results, and the more rewarding it is, so the company has an incentive to participate in PPC.

Li Yanhong proposed the idea of "search ranking ranking", and once implemented, it means that Baidu needs to transform its role from a leading search technology provider to a bidding ranking service provider.

To transform into a PPC service provider, Baidu must build its own website, which will have a "interception" effect on the portal, so that the relationship between Baidu and several major portals such as Sohu and Sina, which provide 80% of its revenue, will undergo subtle changes, and it is very likely to affect the company's revenue.

This is a far cry from the business model written in Baidu's business plan to investors.

Investors are opposed.

The board of directors unanimously agreed that search engine technology is the foundation of Baidu, and it is Baidu's ready-made interests, and they do not want to give up the cake that has already been given up to provide services for the portal website prematurely.

If it was just the board of directors who disagreed, it would have been a disagreement within the company, and the senior management team such as Xu Yong, Li Yanhong's close partner, had also objected to this.

Proposing the strategic shift of PPC made Robin Li experience the taste of loneliness for the first time.

It is difficult to move forward with this matter.

During that time, Robin Li was in a hurry, and when he went to the SAR branch in August, he suffered from proctitis and was admitted to the hospital, but his determination to implement the bidding ranking did not waver at all.

The decisive video conference call took place in the offices of the SAR branch, and the atmosphere was very solemn and tense, because there had already been a heated exchange of opinions between the opposing sides.

Robin Li dragged his sick body and showed the vigor of participating in the debate competition at Peking University that year, and talked endlessly and impassionedly for two or three hours at the board meeting.

Li Yanhong, who has always been gentle and calm, is really anxious, this is the first time he has encountered a crisis of confidence since he founded Baidu, and the company's directors and executives have questioned him.

After the statement, the two sides fought each other in close quarters, expressing their own opinions and arguing with each other.

"At present, Baidu's customers are mainly portals, but in a year the number of our customers will not be multiplied by two, and our revenue on this product will not be multiplied by two. ”

"If you want to have high returns, the company has to grow at close to 100 percent every year, and we're still losing money, so we can't stick to that business model anymore. ”

Robin Li struggled to keep his emotions under control and tried to convince the board.

However, the directors were unceremonious and unusually resolute: "We didn't ask you to do this when we invested in Baidu. ”

"Baidu's core will still be technology, but the search engine services for the portal will have to be weakened. If you want to have a high growth rate, you must shift your focus to other places, and if you want to have your own development, you must have your own independent traffic, rather than relying on portals to sustain it. We had to have our own portal. ”

Robin Li argues on the basis of reason.

"It's too risky, what if it fails?"

"If you don't change, you're dead. ”

Li Yanhong's voice became louder and louder, and the conference room became more and more noisy, which finally turned into a quarrel.

Of course, quarrels also have to divide people, if Li Yanhong can't understand the chatter of those foreign directors, there will be no way to quarrel.

Li Yanhong can quarrel because he speaks good English and has no communication barriers with the directors, even if it is a quarrel.

Some local entrepreneurs in China have poor English skills, and they cannot communicate normally with foreign investors on the board of directors, and when they have different opinions, they can only slap the table angrily.

Although Li Yanhong's English level is very good, enough to accurately express his thoughts in hand-to-hand combat, his two fists are difficult to beat with four hands, and he is still forced to be anxious in the end.

"I don't do it, everyone don't do it, close the company and pull it down!"

Li Yanhong, who couldn't convince this group of old antiques, broke out completely, and with a "snap", he suddenly slammed his mobile phone on the table.

When Li Yanhong was angry, he liked to drop his own things, and later when discussing the issue of whether Baidu should be listed or sold to others, he dropped his mobile phone again......

Of course, that's all for later.

Li Yanhong smashed the mobile phone and broke it apart, this sudden scene stunned everyone, and there was a brief awkward silence in the conference room.

The directors realized that it was impossible to get Li Yanhong to back down.

The attitude of several investors began to ease, and they did not dare to stimulate Robin Li too much.

The end result is that the investors compromised.

This was the best outcome of such an impasse, and although no one agreed with Li until the end, the plan was passed, including the most conservative directors, who finally agreed to the company's transformation......

This is the famous Li Yanhong "smashed mobile phone incident".