In 2008, Jerry Liu has been in position to help reflect on love.
The former CTO Baidu search site founded by life love to help, in 2008 provoked the lawsuits, let Jianguo into such a thought: Where is the competitiveness of love to help.
As the result of search in life public comment in reference to the network users review, by the latter to court. After another half year legal battle, but also caused a network of people, including love to help, including vertical search query.
On the other hand, the pattern of search engines has gradually become clear. To Google and Baidu as the representative of the general search, has accounted for more than 90% of China's search market share. Resulting changes can be seen, once ranked third in the Yahoo search, Yahoo also has been phased out China's strategic focus. Other search engines still have the chance?
In January 2008 and February 2009, the reporter interviewed twice Liu Jianguo and his love to help network. In the meantime, love to help network users turn on a 10-fold, from 100 million in the beginning to today's 10 million. In the voices of doubt, love to help network is still growing rapidly.
"We are a very important job last year, is to their own position is made more accurate number." Positioning not "accurate" to bring a series of problems, Liu Jianguo said frankly that is constantly thinking. For help on how to develop the next love, Jianguo also have their own answer to that search technology and business information generated by this library.
Quitting
April 2008, the public comment Haidian District People's Network to sue that love to help web search results in life in reference to its website users review, infringement of copyright, to love to help take down the relevant web pages. October, Haidian People's Court of First Instance ruling made, dismissed the public comment web requests Love to help apology to sue, the amount of compensation requested by the plaintiff 200,000 yuan from the reduced to 30,000, and ordered Love to help stop the use of network-related public comment Comment content.
Six months later, the same charge by the Haidian Court heard another case so many people thought of love to help: in November 2008, Ctrip prosecution of travel search site, "Where to" plagiarize the hotel comment, this year in January, the Court of first instance verdict, Haidian found "Where" website was established infringement, and ordered to stop infringement on its website home page for 24 hours a public apology.
Content providers are also prosecuted in the industry vertical search, is also a leader in the field of the subdivision proceedings, vertical search is also lost. Triggered two lawsuits, is the vertical search pattern queries, a time to "badmouth" cries. "Compared with the universal search, vertical search technology to face more complex relationship than." Jianguo frankly.
"Outside the complex relationship between technology," in fact not difficult to understand, though, including love to help and go to where the vertical search sites, including repeatedly stated that he and comment, Ctrip, etc. Web site is not competitors, but were in "an eco- system ", but the emergence of vertical search, apparently to some extent the industry itself to change the pattern. Therefore, even if avoided with google, Baidu and other common search bigwigs positive competition, vertical search sites have or will soon realize that he did not enter the imagination of the "Blue Ocean."
"As a vertical search, I do not think that all the vertical search have enough value." Liu Jianguo with respect, to judge the value of vertical search, vertical search key to determine access to the area. In his view, the current domestic situation of vertical search sites, can be divided into three categories, first is the industry players is too small, vertical search will reduce the meaning of existence, such as vertical search on the Job, a few limited Job Site Shangju survival difficult, vertical search is highly confidential; second is the market can still be, but the industry itself there is a strong leader in vertical search will directly affect the entry of vested interests, be regarded as competitors, Ctrip and to Where is the contradiction between is an example. Than the former two, love to help the vertical positioning in the field of "life" on, "compared with the universal search vertical, but compared with the breakdown of the search for another wide enough", "good enough to support several The company's existence. " But even if the chosen "sufficiently large" in the field, love to help but is destined to go a narrow road, the road has not avoid with content providers, universal search disputes.
From the vertical difference between search and universal search, you can simply explain the vertical prosecution of the direct cause of the search: Universal search is a website for the smallest unit, the vertical search is the smallest unit of structured data. Some users search content on the page in the vertical structure of the data obtained, choose not to click on the original pages deeper understanding has led to the original web search can not bring traffic, obviously, "to search for the name of" vertical search moved content providers "cheese."
Discard the contents of a simple reference to the problem, between content providers and vertical search, there are still more profound relevance. Comments and love to help in the dispute, love to help the website also has the service for users to comment, there is homogeneity between the two compete, and, although there is no love to help clear profit model, but it is clear that the most likely to profit Comments similar to the point - business.
Where and Ctrip in cases where, although where the profits go to hundred percent on advertising, and repeatedly emphasized that only do search, do not enter the trading session, but the hotel business as a domestic air ticket booking absolute monopoly, Ctrip can not do the same all products remained the most competitive price, to where the appearance is streaming the Ctrip's customers, at least, may be forced to reduce their own profits Ctrip.
"This is common with the early search and content sites is very similar between the opposition was not too much generic search traffic, then feel like Sina Baidu in a working, are not convinced, but to present the whole The situation has been reversed, the site and hope that their content is crawled. "Jianguo said," This transition is a process. "
Process also takes time.
And with disputes between content sites than, greater threats, including Baidu, google search giants such as GM's watching on vertical search, Kai-fu Lee once said that "the future is to integrate vertical search into Google search." As early as 2005, google will launch a test version of the Live Search service. Up to today, google search of life do not remove them "beta" label, but it means that the existing vertical search sites may fall into the Passing of the situation.
Reposition
In the industry there is no change in the understanding of vertical search before Jianguo choose to retreat.
"Our initial idea is very simple, is to let the Internet help people's life, but life is a big and invisible things, it is difficult to start." Jianguo said. Difficult to start, and everywhere you can start with the early days of love to help inadvertently widened their front.
This trend Liu Jianguo a year ago would love to help the description of the visible: "We hope the information needed to live together and provide one-stop search service life, the other is to build a consumer experience sharing the platform to all users online comment all together and users can also publish our own platform to comment on. "
While the core competence is search technology, and hit "search for life" concept, at least for some time, love to help with "community" ambitions.
"Life is a search service that we have been insisting, but we did comment, did the community, tried the video comment, sns also considered, because the starting point may be too much, our technology surpasses strong What sense can do, but want to do anything, they can not achieve anything. "Jianguo said," let business information libraries in fact quite accurate, more accurate, it is called is called the life of service information library, a little hard to pronounce . "laughs Jerry Liu is currently difficult to capture the information of life is not the biggest key is the data extraction, identification, analysis, exclusion and classification, business updates fast, search engine must keep pace with these changes. And love to help present the largest and most complete life of service information library, covering 15 categories and 1,600 sub-small class, more than 10 million businesses.
"Let the user up social, generated content, requires a strong operational capability, it is not our core competence, re-aggregation and light UGC (user-generated content), this is where the search for competitiveness." Jianguo said. Deduced from love to help new location, is "living the Internet Yellow Pages" - The business unit, with the way search aggregation service life information, and mining data value.
"This is not all love to help, but this is the foundation, must run very deep."
According to this position, the current love to help the community try to gradually weaken, the current page comment and rate the other UGC, "the future and did not do it, how to do it, or a problem", the current thinking is that "through technology Comments own way excavation, "not simply to comment and present them to crawl, literally as shown. Currently, the website of love to help, such attempt has begun, with uniform standards by searching the contents will be divided into favorable comment, the comments, bad comments, and statistics of their respective share of the final results will show up .
"These statistics horizontal pull, can show a lot of interesting things." Jianguo said that in his view, the "depth of data mining" is a love of helping one of the main direction of the future, "value would be greater and also avoid direct competition with the content providers. "
In addition to the early days of the 500 million U.S. dollars angel investment, the end of 2008, love to help network has conducted a round of financing, the investors and the investment amount, Liu Jianguo are unwilling to talk, now, love to help network have not yet tried any of the possible The profit model.