The evolutionary history of search engines is the evolutionary history of artificial intelligence technology.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Junshi Taibao” (ID: taibaocaijing), author Li Jun. Authorized to reprint.
The media research scholar who successfully predicted the global village, artificial intelligence and knowledge economy, McLuhan said in “Understanding Media” that “we have shaped the tools, and then the tools have shaped us and danced with them to cope with the future.”
This sentence may also be the best summary of the development of mobile search in the past ten years. In the process of the Internet giant constantly promoting the evolution of mobile search, the ecology of giants can also be improved by the evolution of mobile search technology, and mobile search In turn, we constantly change our living habits.
Three transformations of mobile search
In the past ten years, the mobile Internet has already achieved a comprehensive transcendence of the traditional Internet from the “Fire of the Stars”. In the social field, WeChat subverted QQ; in the e-commerce field, mobile phone Taobao subverted PC online shopping; in the game field, the income of mobile games exceeded the sum of end games and page games. However, after entering the mobile era, search engines are still evolving. Overall, mobile search has undergone three major transformations, and these three transformations have largely become the epitome of the decade of mobile Internet development.
In the excessive phase of the Internet to the mobile Internet, although the search demand quickly changed from the PC to the mobile after the emergence of the smartphone, the main carrier for people to get information began to shift from the computer to the mobile phone, but the mobile search at this time is very large. To a certain extent, it is only a vassal of PC search, and the App economy has not started to rise. We just add mobile phones as a supplement to computers. At this time, the mobile Internet still needs to use the search box to obtain information.
After the iPhone was born, the mobile phone became more intelligent, and the highly intelligent app replaced web search. The frequency and duration of instant messaging applications and information applications such as WeChat opened far exceeded the open search engine, based on LBS. A number of new search needs have emerged. For example, through a local life app, people quickly find out how many restaurants are nearby, what movies are being shown in the cinema, and even ordering meals or buying movie tickets, and paying for them immediately.
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App splits the mobile internet into one by oneFragmented information islands, the use of mobile search has become more diversified, and the connection between search engines and life services has never been closer. It is also at this stage that Baidu proposes a strategy of connecting people and services, and mobile revenue. For the first time over the PC, Baidu map, Baidu glutinous rice and other apps laid the foundation for Baidu’s development on the mobile side, and Baidu App has gradually become a super entry point for content distribution and local life services.
In the third stage, under the ubiquitous interests of the giants, platformization and even ecologicalization have become the main direction of competition. From tools to portals to platforms, it has become the development path that every mobile app hopes to achieve. But obviously not every product can afford the burden of platforming. As the platform of the App continues to deepen, many independent App eventually have to rely on super apps like WeChat and Baidu App to become part of their platform and even the ecosystem.
Super App gradually replaced mobile browsers as the entrance to mobile search, but the limitations of mobile screen size have a higher demand for accurate distribution. “Information flow” and “recommendation engine” turned out, the original information distribution model began to change, and the search gradually evolved from “people looking for information” to “information looking for people”, and Baidu also started the second flow of information. Start a business and refocus on “content distribution.”
From “Mobile Search” to “Super Interface”
Reviewing the past year, the mobile Internet dividend disappeared too fiercely, and even giants like BAT are not absolutely sure that they will stand still in the next decade. The root cause is that the stage has changed and the protagonist has to change. In the first half, the absolute protagonist is the Super App. The giants are vying for the entrance, and the number of active users is the same. But in the second half, the flow cake has been basically cut, and all kinds of intelligent terminals are blooming. The giants have turned their eyes to the industrial Internet. The focus of the competition also shifted from the entrance to the super interface.
It is precisely because of this that for a certain strength of Internet companies, they are experiencing a similar business focus transfer process – from super entry to super interface, from super app to super Api. More specifically, that is, the super app began to become assimilated. The combination of “information flow + search box + applet + mobile ecology” gradually became standard. Short videos, graphics, services, shops and other information can be used by Super App. Retrieved. Beyond that, the service capabilities and boundaries of the Super App are beginning to break through.
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Since 2019, the term “mobile ecology” has been frequently interconnected.Net giants mentioned that because this is a key step in building a super interface, Baidu is the most determined. Due to some challenges in the mobile Internet era, Baidu Mobile Ecology has the most urgent need to complete its own remodeling. In the just-released Baidu second-quarter earnings report, the rapid development of smart small programs, the breakthrough of information flow, and the move The ecological strategy has accelerated, and Baidu offers a best evolutionary sample from “mobile search” to “super platform.”
Specificly, in the second quarter, Baidu’s revenue achieved steady performance growth, revenue reached 26.3 billion yuan, an increase of 9% quarter-on-quarter; in June, Baidu App’s daily users reached 188 million, an increase of 27%. Since entering August, it has exceeded 200 million. Nowadays, based on search, information flow, Baijia number, smart small program, long and short video, etc., Baidu is constantly strengthening the status of Baidu App super interface and promoting Baidu. The app’s user length and search traffic have grown strongly.
The growth of smart small programs is particularly critical. In the second quarter, smart small programs reached 270 million monthly users, an increase of 49% in three months. With the increasing number of smart applets, Baidu App not only realized the closed loop of search-as-a-service, but also successfully realized the expansion and breakthrough of offline scenes. The ecological capabilities and service richness of Baidu App will be greatly increased. Upgrade.
The final result of evolution is that Baidu App is no longer a traffic portal, no longer a single application, but a platform that becomes the industry’s intelligent mobile infrastructure, a new commercial operating system.
How will mobile search change in the future?
Along with the sudden decline in the demographic dividend, the consumer Internet, which has propped up the rapid development of the last decade, has come to an end, and the industrial Internet has risen. The era of “super interface” has come to an end, but as Kutzwell said The explosion will not come to an abrupt end, and mobile search is still evolving.
1. Small programs make mobile search “all-in-one”
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The traffic battle for mobile search has become hot, but there is still a lot of space and potential under the line, and the emergence of small programs makes search and offline scenes more closely combined than ever before. The next step in mobile search is likely to be around the information and services carried by the applet.
Small programs are also strengthening BAT’s competitive advantage in the mobile ecosystem. Super App, such as WeChat and Baidu App, is based on strong user coverage.The SMEs under the SMEs provide traffic portals, which in turn change the user’s usage habits. In addition to data, small programs have also opened up the industrial Internet and intelligent space, enabling enterprises that do not have AI capabilities to achieve intelligent upgrades of business and business models.
2, mobile search becomes a “super interactive portal”
Smartphones are still the most mainstream terminals for mobile search, but with the gradual scale of 5G communication technology in the world, the era of Internet of Everything is about to open. The new “terminal replacement” is quiet, and the richer IoT devices mean that search also has a ubiquitous opportunity.
As the most natural way of human-computer interaction in the future, voice is generally considered to be the most promising, and Baidu is currently the leader in this field. By July of this year, the number of activation devices of the DuerOS intelligent voice platform has exceeded 400 million, leading the Chinese market. In the field of smart speakers, Baidu has also maintained rapid growth and gradually expanded its commercialization results. According to data released by Canalys and Strategy Analytics, the small smart speaker has become the No. 1 in the Chinese market for two consecutive quarters, and ranks among the top three in the global market with Amazon and Google.
Bai Yan Chairman and CEO Li Yanhong said, “Search is the foundation of Baidu and is the core value of Baidu. Smart search has broken through the “box” restrictions, extending from mobile phones to smart speakers, smart cars and other scenarios, and will Become a ubiquitous super-intelligent interactive portal.”
3, search engines will become true artificial intelligence
For users, the development of artificial intelligence means that it will be easier for us to find what we need, especially if you have searched for relevant information. By combining other technologies, search engines will become more efficient and create a more user-friendly interface.
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The evolutionary history of search engines is the evolutionary history of artificial intelligence technology. The direction of intelligent search is evolving is a more accurate answer, or even the only answer. When the search engine is in the final stage, it is very likely that no human input is required, and intelligent judgment can be made directly based on the user’s portrait, usage behavior record, sensor data, and the like.
As American inventor and futurist Ray Kuzwell said in the book The Age of Soul Machines, “because the technological explosion will not come to an abrupt end, the improvement of basic disciplines and the growth of the application market, The multiplier effect will be maintained.” The evolution of mobile search will not stop here.The next step, the technological change is bringing new imagination to mobile search, and the future is just beginning.