Does ByteDance's search app pose threat to Baidu?

ByteDance, which runs content aggregator Jinri Toutiao and short video platform Douyin, launches an independent search app called "Toutiao Search", which is ByteDance's further penetration into Baidu's business hinterland.

In addition to information flow and search, there are also competitions between the two parties in short videos and content socializing. The high-profile public relations battles are always better than the actual confrontation on the strength of technology products. How does Baidu defend or respond to "Toutiao Search"? We will still have to wait and see.

ByteDance recently launched the "Toutiao Search" standalone app, which is now available on major Android app stores.

ByteDance has been exploring search technology since 2016 and has built a search engine in Jinri Toutiao and launched independent web search.

According to media reports in March 2019, Wu Kai, the former 360 search product leader, will be the head of the Toutiao Search business today, and will begin the commercialization of the search business.

Last March, Jinri Toutiao's built-in search officially launched the entire network search function. In the second half of last year, the news of Jinri Toutiao officially entering the general search field spread.

From the product point of view, the design of the "Toutiao Search" app page is very similar to the "Baidu search" app. The home page is a search box + information stream, and the video and small video entrances are set at the bottom.

But there are some differences in the search content. The search results of the keywords "web class" and "Toutiao Search" on the two apps are all Toutiaohao content by Jinri Toutiao.

The search results for "Baidu" are promotional content, third-party network information, and Baijiahao content.

On November 27 last year, Zhu Wenjia, CEO of Jinri Toutiao, spoke about Toutiao Search at the 36kr wise conference, saying that Jinri Toutiao had established a unique search technology architecture in the industry.

He said that ByteDance was to explore machine learning solutions from recommendation engines, and then migrated this set of technical architecture and underlying algorithms to search engines, and found that they also worked well.

He also said that to make a good search engine, technology is needed first, and technology determines the search experience; second is content, and content is the root of search; and finally, the original intention, determines whether the product can go long-term.

As of last year, Jinri Toutiao has launched more than 1.6 million Toutiaohao creators since the launch of Toutiaohao in 2014, adding more than 600,000 content daily, and an average daily content consumption of more than 5 billion times.

In 2019, the creators of the Jinri Toutiao platform published a total of 450 million pieces of content. The huge content ecology is one of the strengths of Toutiao Search.

But at the same time, ByteDance's search road is also challenging.

On the one hand, in the era of the mobile Internet, users are increasingly relying on mobile apps such as Weibo, WeChat, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu to search for vertical content, affecting the development path of search engines.

On the other hand, it comes from Baidu, an opponent that occupies most of the industry.

According to statcounter data, in the Chinese search engine market in 2019, Baidu still occupies nearly 2/3 of the search engine market share, but its market share has dropped from 71.40% at the beginning of the year to 67.09% at the end of the year.

According to the financial report for the fourth quarter of 2019 released by Baidu today, BaiduAPP's daily active users reached 195 million. Baidu's internal search market share continued to expand, and the number of internal searches increased by nearly 30% year-on-year.

In terms of content ecology, Baidu's content creators in Baijiahao reached 2.6 million in December last year, a year-on-year increase of 38%.

At the same time, Baidu has been vigorously promoting Mini-program to connect information content and services in recent years. According to Baidu's fourth quarter 2019 financial report, smart Mini-program has 316 million monthly active users, a year-on-year increase of 114%.

In addition, in recent years, Baidu has caused huge negative impact on Baidu ’s advertising bidding rankings. However, Baidu is also working on the authority of search content, such as the introduction of medical encyclopedias, authoritative entry certifications, etc., to improve the search of medical content Authenticity and authority. At the same time, AI is used to promote the intelligence of search engines.

No matter from the number of users or the content ecology, Baidu is a heavyweight opponent.

In December last year, Baidu brought ByteDance to court for "Toutiao Search". Baidu claimed that its rights to video products were used by Jinri Toutiao as a keyword to trigger search ads in "Toutiao Search" to interfere with search results. ByteDance was therefore sued for unfair competition.

For the promotion of the "Toutiao Search" independent app, it is unknown how Baidu will defend, but in fact, due to the information flow business benchmarking of one of the core interests, Baidu and Jinri Toutiao have encountered each other many times before.

In April last year, Baidu claimed that Jinri Toutiao had stolen Baidu's "TOP1" search product results in large quantities, sued Jinri Toutiao on the grounds of unfair competition, demanded that the infringement be stopped immediately, and claimed 90 million yuan.

In the afternoon of the same day, Douyin, a subsidiary of ByteDance, stated that Baidu had stolen a large number of short Douyin videos during the search and brought Baidu to court for unfair competition. Baidu was requested to stop the infringement immediately and compensate 90 million yuan.

Data show that from February 2016 to May 2019, Baidu had 12 cases related to the headline subject ByteDance.

The most litigious case is the case between Baidu and Jinri Toutiao's copyrighted picture website Dongfang IC. Since April 2018, there have been more than 100 information infringement disputes involving the right to disseminate pictures.

At the beginning of 2017, Robin Li's internal speech focused on Baidu's core business and focused on content distribution. He said that information flow will be a big growth point for Baidu in the future. Baidu's financial report shows that by the third quarter of 2017, nearly one-third of Baidu's revenue came from information flow business, which was about $ 1 billion.

The information flow business is also the core revenue source of Jinri Toutiao. Jinri Toutiao's information flow business started early and has begun to seize the market since 2014. It is reported that headline advertising revenue in 2017 reached 15 billion yuan.

Until recently, Toutiao launched an independent search app, which is the way Toutiao has further penetrated the business hinterland of Baidu.

In addition to information flow and search, there is also competition between the two parties in the fields of short videos and content socialization. High-profile public relations battles are always worse than the real confrontation on the strength of technology products. How will Baidu defend or respond to "Toutiao Search", we will still have to wait and see.