This article is from the WeChat public account: Penguin Ecology (ID: qieshengtai) , author: king penguin ecology, Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash

As the WeChat annual conference, which is the pre-heating of the “WeChat Open Class PRO” named by the WeChat official, WeChat announced on December 11 that it will officially change the name of “WeChat Search” to “WeChat Search and Search”, and said that Souyisou will make a full appearance in the 2020 WeChat Open Class PRO.

The official appearance of WeChat Search has come a long time after the industry ’s expectations, but fortunately, finally.

Although the official appearance of WeChat search was linked to the strategic cooperation between Tencent and Sogou, it is considered a sign that Tencent will abandon Sogou in the end.

But in fact, if you understand the importance of WeChat search and the huge search ecosystem that WeChat has formed, you will know that this will not let Sogou have a market value of more than one billion US dollars. (December 11th data) outside companies to do.

WeChat is the largest search entry on the mobile terminal, WeChat account is the largest and best content ecology on the mobile terminal, and applets are the largest service ecology on the mobile terminal.

Search services built on top of this are too important and inevitableIt is up to Tencent WeChat to do it. In other words, Tencent abandoned Sogou, which has nothing to do with Sogou.

WeChat is impossible without searching

Before 2015, the search box on the WeChat chat bar actually became the largest search entry on the mobile terminal; while WeChat has a WeChat public account with billions of PVs each day, forming the largest content search ecosystem on the mobile terminal.

As the total number of applets exceeds one million and 300 million daily active, applets have also formed the largest service ecosystem on mobile terminals.

At the same time, Tencent’s other businesses also have huge digital content libraries and services that also require WeChat traffic, so we ca n’t always come to WeChat to enter and open the sunroof.

How to achieve accurate access to these huge amounts of content and services depends on the subscription system formed by users’ sharing and forwarding on the one hand, and precise traffic distribution by search engines on the other.

According to Zhang Xiaolong’s 2019 WeChat Open Class PRO, “users need to get through social and search.” Zhang Xiaolong was referring to the logic of the distribution of the applet, but this logic is also applicable to content and other products and services.

From this perspective, search is an inevitable part of WeChat’s entire huge ecosystem. It is impossible to do without doing it, and it must be done for your own team.


The reason why WeChat search came out is also related to Sogou

This matter actually goes back to a long time ago, when it was still Sohu. In 2013, Tencent and Sohu entered into a transaction that shocked the entire network. Tencent gave up its own search engine and used cash and resources to add a team to acquire more than 40% of Sogou.

At that time, the agreement also stipulated that Tencent must provide Sogou’s services in priority in providing search services in new products, including the most important WeChat. The agreement is valid for five years, that is, until September 2018.

Tencent later signed an agreement with Sogou. One is that Sogou can continue to use Tencent’s non-WeChat traditional traffic resources until 2023. This guarantees that Sogou can continue to use the traffic of the QQ browser to monetize. The investment benefits of Tencent;

The other is in the recently announced Sogou 2019 third quarter report, Sogou announced that it has renewed its third-party search service preferred by WeChat. So we will see that WeChat search results also have a “Web Search” section that uses Sogou.

Anyway, WeChat is now truly exempted from the original agreement in 2013 and can do its own search service.

WeChat search is actually based on two important megatrends.

A big trend is that search services are integrated into browsers, information streams, and even social products, becoming built-in services for super apps. Especially with the rise of the applet ecosystem, this trend is becoming more and more obvious.

The first was the fusion of search and browser, and then the convergence of information flow, browser and search flow. Today’s headlines extended search engines to challenge Baidu, which has been in the media for a long time this year.

Then the only thing Tencent can do in China is the integration of social products and search, that is, WeChat will officially search for WeChat on the 2020 WeChat Open Course PRO.

In addition, the integration of information flow, browser, and search flow is actually being done by Tencent. It is currently part of the Tencent information flow team that belongs to PCG. It is based on 185 million products such as QQ Aspect and QQ Browser. Do it daily. This piece is actually restricted by the cooperation agreement with Sogou.

Another big trend is the traditional search ecology, which is replaced by the content ecology and service ecology extended by super apps.

The traditional search ecological advantages represented by Baidu and Sogou are quantity; the advantage of WeChat search ecology is quality.

The highest quality original content ecology of the Chinese Internet lies in the WeChat public platform, followed by the headline. This is beyond the reach of traditional search engines such as Baidu and Sogou.

In addition, the profit model that traditional search engines rely on has also worsened the traditional search ecosystem. This is also something that domestic netizens often talk about, and everyone wants a better search ecology.

These things can only be done on WeChat, and only WeChat can be used in China, instead of Sogou, whose revenue model stays on the realization of traditional search traffic and has a market value of less than US $ 2 billion.

So Tencent’s abandonment of Sogou has nothing to do with Sogou.

This article is from the WeChat public account: Penguin Ecology (ID: qieshengtai) , author: Penguin Eco-Jun