In the face of the cold-blood capital market, which only talks about commercial interests and does not talk about business ethics, whether Tencent can hold the bottom line of “science and technology to goodness” for a long time will be a severe test of its strength.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Stone Business Review” (ID: libusiness), author Liu Xuehui, Liu Guohua, editor Jin Mei.
Tencent publicly clarified that “technology is good” is the new mission and vision of the company. It is undoubtedly putting a heavy shackle on itself and binding itself. On the one hand, it will invest huge sums of money and energy in public welfare undertakings that cannot produce direct commercial benefits. In addition, it will put all its business actions under the strict scrutiny of public opinion, which will make Tencent lose a lot of “technical good.” “The business vision of the mission vision is contrary. However, in the face of fierce competitors who do not have to take into account the values, whether in the face of the cold-blood capital market where commercial interests are not business ethics, whether Tencent can hold the bottom line of “scientific and technologically good” for a long time will be a severe force for its determination. test.
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Recently, the author noticed a major event in the international business field, that is, Microsoft won the US Department of Defense’s $10 billion cloud computing contract.
This cloud computing contract is called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which provides services such as basic cloud services and artificial intelligence processing, machine learning, and mission-critical workload processing to the US Department of Defense.
Because of the huge amount of this contract, it is possible to change the current competitive landscape of the US cloud computing field, thus attracting fierce competition from several major IT giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Oracle. In the bidding process of various giant companies, there have been vicious competitions such as mutual accusations. Even after the US Department of Defense announced that Microsoft won the contract, the cloud computing giant Amazon will still make a decision on the US Department of Defense on November 8. protest.
But when the tech giants struggled for this huge cloud computing contract, another US technology giant, Google, announced on October 9 that it would no longer participate in the US Department of Defense JEDI contract bidding. The reason is that the project may not meet the values standards of its company.
In April of this year, Google announced a partnership with the US Department of Defense, which will use Google’s AI technology to interpret video images, allegedly likely to be used to improve the accuracy of drone strikes. This directly led to nearly 4,000 Google employees jointly protesting, strongly opposed to Google’s use of AI technology for military research, and even more than a dozen Google employees collectively announced their resignation in order to counter the cooperation between Google and the US military.
In the end, Google is in business interests and values.Before, I chose to stick to the values and give up the $10 billion cloud computing contract. “We didn’t bid for the JEDI contract because we couldn’t guarantee that it met our AI principles first,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Google was widely praised by the outside world for its “no evil” values, and later changed to “do the right thing,” but these values have been like a shackle in recent years, and they have shackled Google to give up a lot of values. Violating business opportunities. For example, Google is implementing a much stricter content and advertising review standard than Chinese search engine companies, and has therefore abandoned a large number of non-compliant advertisers and advertising revenue.
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Tencent, one of China’s leading Internet giants, on November 11, 2019, the 21st anniversary of Tencent’s establishment, was chaired by Chairman Ma Huateng, President Liu Chiping and Tencent’s head office to more than 40,000 The employee posted a full-mail email and officially announced that Tencent’s new mission vision is “user-oriented, technology-oriented”.
After Tencent announced this new mission vision, it was widely recognized by outsiders. There are even evaluations that Google’s previous “do not be evil” principle is the first definition of the ethical standards of science and technology. Tencent’s proposal of “scientific and technologically good” is a new definition of the ethical standards of science and technology, and an upgrade of Google’s ethical standards. It is clear that science and technology ethics should go further, from “neutral” to “goodwill.” However, it is an extremely difficult and complicated road for “science and technology to be good”. Whether Tencent can stand in the face of huge commercial interests and persist in “scientific and technologically good” as Google insists on its own values remains to be tested.
Practicing “technology to good” requires Tencent to invest huge sums of money and use technology to do a lot of things that are conducive to improving social well-being, but will not bring direct business returns. For example, Tencent Science Week, initiated by Tencent, was composed of the “Science Discovery Award” awards ceremony, Tencent “Science WE Conference” and Tencent “Medical ME Conference”. These three activities are not related to business, only to promote China. The development of basic science and technology research.
Among them, the Science Discovery Awards focus on nine basic sciences such as “Mathematics Physics, Life Sciences, Astronomy and Earth Sciences, New Chemical Materials, Information Electronics, Energy and Environmental Protection, Advanced Manufacturing, Transportation and Construction Technology, and Frontier Intersection Technology”. In the frontier technology field, 50 young and middle-aged scientists aged 45 or younger are selected each year, and each scientist is supported by 600,000 yuan per year for 5 consecutive years, totaling 3 million yuan, aiming for these basic scientific research.The scientists provided the help of charcoal in the snow, so that they can continue to climb the scientific peak and help the country’s basic scientific research and cutting-edge core technology exploration in the critical period of seeking innovation and not yet finally breaking through.
Tencent Science WE Conference, not to talk about competition between businesses or companies, but to focus on how to use technology to change human life and explore important scientific issues related to human destiny. For example, this year’s Tencent Science WE Conference focused on the “small universe” and focused on exploring the macroscopic world in microscopic materials, inviting the world’s top scientists to share breakthroughs in the fields of string theory, microscopic particles, brain science and geological science.
Tencent Medical ME Conference invites the world’s top medical scientists to focus on the most concerned diseases such as cancer, depression and AIDS, showing cutting-edge medical breakthroughs, hoping to lead more people to pay attention to life and self-awareness through authoritative medicine. Popular science improves public health and reduces the pain of illness.
The founder of Tencent, Ma Huateng, said many times when he talked about scientific research, he did not believe that he would overtake the corner and appreciate the starry sky and down-to-earth. It can be seen from the above activities that the WE conference focuses on the starry sky and is dedicated to exploring unknown areas; the ME conference focuses on down-to-earth, science and technology frontier medical achievements; and the scientific exploration award is for the future, encouraging young scientific talents to explore the future science no man’s land.
As a giant enterprise with an annual profit of over 100 billion yuan, Tencent is not the most difficult to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars every year to do science and technology public welfare. The most difficult thing is to clearly put forward “technology is good” in Tencent. As a mission vision, it is equivalent to putting a heavy shackle on itself and self-binding. In the future, every move of your business will be placed under the strict scrutiny of public opinion, which will cause Tencent to lose a lot of Good business opportunities that are contrary to the mission vision.
At present, in the Internet industry in China, there are many business activities that do not conform to the principle of “goodness to goodness”, such as providing a large amount of vulgar content information flow, short video and live broadcast services. For example, in the name of Pratt & Whitney, it is in disguised form of usury. P2P and cash lending businesses, such as fake medical and financial fraud advertisements that are extremely rampant on the Internet, will strictly collapse according to the standard of “goodness”, and China will have a large number of well-known Internet companies whose business models have collapsed. I feel extremely angry when I see these companies doing these unethical business practices in the name of “technology.”
Tencent is also facing the temptation of some similar businesses. For example, in recent years, some popular products have emerged in the field of information flow and short video, and have made hugeBusiness success, but there is a lot of controversy behind these business successes, because these products do not make society better, but make society worse.
The rise of emerging power in the field of information flow and short video has also made Tencent into a dilemma. Because the core of the success of these two products is based on the user’s historical reading data, the user’s reading preferences are obtained through algorithm analysis. On the one hand, the user is pushed to some solid content that caters to the user’s interest, and on the other hand, “carrying the private goods”. Deliberately pushing some “spam” that is ugly, sensational, and nutritious but easy to “addictive” to the user to read, in order to cater to the vulgar and dark part of human nature, after reading the “junk” information, the user further gives Users recommend more similar vulgar content, thereby enrolling users in their own app world, thus realizing huge traffic on the platform and realizing the realization of traffic. These information streams and short video products are also subject to repeated penalties by regulators because of these ills.
In addition, user privacy is a topic of intense debate around the world. At the Microsoft Future Decoded conference in London, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said: “For privacy Truly as a human right, all of us need to think about the digital experience we have created.” Before Nadella’s public speech on data privacy, a senior Democratic senator in the United States recently announced a bill, which provides for a bill. “Executives who violate privacy and cybersecurity standards will face high fines and up to 20 years in prison.”
From the emerging information flow and short video product model, it is in conflict with Tencent’s mission vision of “Science and Technology to Goodness”. If Tencent adheres to the mission and vision of “Science and Technology to Goodness”, it does not adopt this kind of machine recommendation model that has natural advantages in attracting users and traffic, and can only watch the new forces gain a large number of users. If Tencent also completely adopts the controversial model of new power manufacturers, it will seriously violate its mission and vision of “scientific and technologically good”.
From the current business of Tencent, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong is firmly rejecting this kind of machine recommendation model based on user preferences. The WeChat ecosystem mainly adopts the “public platform” subscription mode and the “look and see” social recommendation mode. . Zhang Xiaolong believes that the social system evolved by human beings is a complex system with error correction function. If the user is biased, a friend will pull you back. The machine recommendation is beyond the scope of traditional tools, and becomes a tool that can control human beings, not only does not have error correction function, but insteadThe user is wrong on the wrong road. Therefore, Zhang Xiaolong Ning can choose to sacrifice the flow, make “look and see” into a niche serious reading product, and not infringe on user privacy and lower the content bottom line.
But some products of Tencent will adopt a machine intelligence recommendation mode similar to some products in order to obtain traffic. After Tencent has defined the mission and vision of “Science and Technology to Goodness”, how to make trade-offs on these products will be the first test to be faced.
In addition, the macroeconomic downturn in recent years has led to a significant decline in advertising budgets for traditional advertisers such as autos and real estate. In this case, advertisers with false and deceptive nature such as medicine and mutual money are becoming An important source of advertising revenue for large Internet companies. Under this circumstance, if Tencent adheres to the mission vision of “Science and Technology is good”, it must strictly enforce the threshold of advertising review, discard many advertisers who do not meet the auditing standards, and watch these customers flow to those who do not have the bottom line constraint. Competitor.
This way, Tencent, which practices “scientific and technologically good”, may lose some battlefields like short video, live broadcast and information flow, and lose some medicine and finance when competing with competitors who do not care about value constraints. Advertisers in the field. In addition, while losing these business tracks and customers, Tencent may also face the abandonment of the cold-blood capital market, which only talks about commercial interests and does not speak business ethics.
The above-mentioned decision-making choices in the face of huge commercial interests and external pressures in specific businesses are the biggest challenges for Tencent to announce its mission of “Science and Technology to Goodness”.
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In any case, Tencent’s courage to openly propose “technology to goodness” as its mission and vision is worthy of our encouragement. Many other Internet companies engaged in social networking, live broadcasts, short videos, information streams, search engines and mutual gold businesses have avoided the word “to be good” because if they are “standard”, Business models will likely collapse.
Tencent’s courage to openly propose that “technology is good” stems from the enthusiasm for its own business. In the past 21 years of business development, Tencent has not clearly stated that “technology is good”, but to a certain extent This is the standard.
For example, in the early development of China Mobile Monternet, many value-added content service providers working with China Mobile used a means to earn a large amount of “red” income, but Tencent firmly believes that such practices are hurting user value, and must Can’t last long. Therefore, Tencent resolutely gave up the “red” income of Monternet and vigorously laid out new services such as Tencent Games and Tencent.com to get rid of the dependence on Monternet.
QQ was originally a software product based on young people’s socialization. It has all the conveniences of using erotic content to seek user growth. In the early days, it was criticized for some “yellow gambling” content, especially in competition with MSN. In the process of high-end users, it was once the best. However, QQ has always tried its best to get rid of the vulgar and unethical commercialization methods, and carried out a lot of innovations that make the work and life of the people truly convenient, and finally become the most successful Internet application in the PC Internet era.
When WeChat was born, social apps with some strangers were regarded as “approximate artifacts”, but when strangers’ social apps launched live shows and used pornographic edge balls to seek commercial interests, WeChat always kept Users are better at transforming their products, and they are launching a circle of friends, subscription numbers, WeChat payment and small programs that are groundbreaking in the world.
Tencent games were once criticized for their harm to children. Tencent realized that not all children can reasonably arrange games and studies. Tencent has continued to do a lot of youth anti-addiction measures, especially Since last year, some games of Tencent have begun to require each user to verify the identity card information and the identity card information of the public security system before playing the game. At present, Tencent is still trying to introduce the face recognition system into the anti-addiction system.
When many Internet companies rush to short-term interests and relax the threshold of advertising review, leading to false advertising and financial fraud, such as advertising on the Internet, Tencent, which has the largest user and traffic in China, has always exercised restraint. The three aspects of “Advertising Review” and “Advertising Inspection” have set up a strict auditing mechanism to defend the bottom line of the business, and only obtained the revenue scale that is far from the scale of traffic. At Tencent’s 2018 performance interpretation meeting, Tencent’s president Liu Chiping said, “Although our advertising has more potential, and our advertising fill rate is lower than that of foreign domestic counterparts, we are not in a hurry to improve the filling rate very quickly. We hope that a stable approach will be developed for each sector in the long run. We believe this is the most beneficial to the company and the most beneficial to users.”
The above behaviors have sacrificed a lot of short-term commercial interests to some extent, but in the end we found that Tencent has not been damaged for a long time. It is precisely because we do not seek the short-term commercial benefits at the expense of user value, but always strive to create new user value and realize business value, so that QQ has become China’s national-level instant messaging products, let WeChat become the whole society. The infrastructure of life and business has also created China’s largest boutique content product matrix, such as Tencent Video, Tencent Sports, Tencent Music, Tencent Literature, Tencent Film and Tencent Animation. And the main competitors of Tencent, such as MSN, Renren and 51 Space, in the social field, have been declining due to excessive commercial development and sacrificing user experience.
Like Tencent, Google insists on “doing no evil” and “doing the right thing”. Google has more stringent standards in search content and advertising than other domestic search engine companies, which has caused it to lose a lot of short-term business. Benefits, but this also prompted it not only to lie on the hotbed of search traffic, but to continue to innovate beyond the search engine service, and finally launched the Android operating system, which was a great success. On the other hand, the Chinese counterparts in the same search engine field, due to excessive obsession with traffic-based advertising revenue, generate innovation inertia, and ultimately form a huge gap with Google.
Tencent and Google’s case are all good proofs of adhering to the “goodness” and insisting on “doing no evil” and “doing the right thing”. Although the short-term interests of the company will be damaged, in the long run, the company is moving toward Great foundation. Many companies understand this truth, but in the face of commercial interests, facing competitors, and facing the pressure of the capital market, there are very few that can actually be practiced.
Tencent has done a good job in this area in the past 21 years, which has finally made it stand out from many Internet companies. In the future, Tencent will surely encounter new temptations and new challenges, but hope that it will face cold-blooded business-only ethics without facing fierce competitors who do not care about value constraints. In the capital market, we can still maintain our strength and persist in the bottom line of “technology is good”.
Only with goodwill, users will never leave.