Reborn multinational giant

"Personal cloud really has such a (money) prospect?" This is a question in the minds of many domestic Internet company bosses.

At the same time two years ago, Baidu Cloud was established, and it won 10 million users in just one and a half months, causing a shock in the domestic Internet industry.

Since then, well-known domestic Internet companies such as Sina and 360 have begun to pay attention to and get involved in the field of personal cloud computing. To put it bluntly, they are learning Baidu Cloud and opening various 360 network disks and Sina network disks. Online cloud disk service.

In the past two years, although the industry has been developing rapidly, each company has accumulated a certain number of users. Like the earliest Baidu Cloud, the number of users has exceeded 100 million.

However, two years later, whether it is Baidu Cloud or other Internet companies that do personal clouds, basically they have not found a more suitable business model.

So far, the few paid services provided by various companies are spending money to expand the upper limit of personal cloud space and spending money to increase the speed of uploading and downloading files.

Speaking of this, I have to remind the CEOs of various Internet companies to regret things.

In the past two years, in order to snatch new users, companies have engaged in various activities such as sending a few Gs to registered accounts and inviting friends to send a few Gs. This has directly caused most users to have large enough cloud disks. space.

On average, each user doesn't even use 1% of the upper limit of space. You have to expect users to use the upper limit of space, and you don't know that you have to wait until the year of the monkey, let alone expand the upper limit of space.

The same pitfall is that most users use online disks for the convenience of storing some movie seeds or learning materials. Many of them are very active in saving collections, but they rarely open, download or learn. Those who are willing to download, they I don’t care about the speed of the download at all. I can download it when I can download it. I just don’t need to learn it. What a good excuse!

This bleak reality has caused all the CEOs of Internet companies that had plunged into their hearts to ask questions. Can this stuff make money?They are never uncommon to make a profit at a loss!

In the past two years, every Internet company's personal cloud business has been losing money, and many CEOs have secretly scolded Baidu Manager Li in their hearts: "What about a market with a scale of 100 billion US dollars?"

The unclear profit model has also caused the personal cloud business that was originally optimistic to gradually cool down. Even many small Internet companies that followed the trend have begun to cut this business and exit the personal cloud computing field.

However, in this context, Baidu, the number one player in the domestic personal cloud field, went against the trend and announced that it would invest another 10 billion yuan in Baidu Cloud!

I don't understand, I really don't understand. This is the thoughts of a large number of Internet company CEOs who follow the trend and engage in cloud disks, including Mr. Zhou Zhou, Mr. Cao of Sina, Mr. Ding of Netease and so on.

Many of them are both puzzled and secretly happy. Has Baidu found a good personal cloud business model?Doesn't that mean that your own personal cloud business can also "learn" and start making money?Is it too late for another wave of activities to register and send cloud disk space?

In fact, Mr. Li of Baidu has troubles in his heart. Regardless of whether Baidu’s cloud business can make money in the next few years, he must take a gamble and spend the money because of the global Internet industry’s The trend is all about the mobile Internet, and Baidu’s unsuccessful transition to the mobile Internet industry has become the culprit of Baidu’s current downturn in stock price and not being favored by investors. Baidu desperately needs to find a new growth engine, one for investors and investors. People are optimistic about the concept, and this concept is cloud computing.

Although the domestic personal cloud industry has gone from being popular to being less optimistic in the past two years, in foreign countries, thanks to Microsoft's good performance in the field of cloud office, personal cloud is still favored by investors and investors, and Baidu, which is listed on the US stock market, It also happens that this kind of optimism is needed. As soon as the news of Baidu's investment of 10 billion yuan in Baidu Cloud was announced, Baidu's stock price rose by 7%, and the book market value increased by tens of billions of yuan!

And Baidu President Li also plans to learn from foreign Microsoft and earn back this 10 billion yuan investment from the cloud office field!

As soon as September entered, Baidu Cloud announced that Baidu Cloud would invest in Kingsoft Cloud under the domestic Kingsoft Software Company at a price of RMB 1.02 billion, accounting for 51% of the shares. At the same time, the two companies reached a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly expand the domestic office cloud. In the field of the market, as soon as the news came out, the CEOs of domestic Internet companies understood that Baidu’s 10 billion yuan was meant to play this way!

Office cloud can be counted as either a personal cloud business or an enterprise cloud business. In foreign countries, Microsoft has directly established its own office cloud business based on the Office series software that dominates the office field.

To make a simple analogy, for many business white-collar workers who frequently use word, excel, ppt and other office software, as long as they use the same Microsoft account, they can use, edit and save their related documents stored in the cloud anytime, anywhere. It is a very convenient and thoughtful function for a large number of office workers who have used office for many years abroad.

It is also because of this huge office user that supports the rapid development of Microsoft's personal cloud and enterprise cloud business, but in China, is this routine workable?

The cooperation between Baidu and Kingsoft Cloud is precisely because it has taken a fancy to the WPS series of domestic office software similar to office under Kingsoft, and hopes to replicate Microsoft's overseas routines and brilliance through the WPS series, but all this is in the knowledge of this news. It seems a bit too naive!

As a housekeeping product of Microsoft, the office series has been developed and accumulated for more than 30 years. It can even be said simply and directly that there are only two core products of Microsoft, the windows operating system and office software, which have been developed and iterated for more than 30 years. Office has long been deeply rooted in the global market and has become synonymous with office software.

Relying solely on office software licensing and services, Microsoft makes a net profit of six to seven billion U.S. dollars each quarter, that is, three months, equivalent to 40 to 50 billion yuan. In contrast, Jinshan's wps series has quarterly revenue of 100 million yuan. Less than.

In the field of domestic office software, Kingsoft's wps series has a market share of less than 30%, while the rest is a large number of pirated office software and other software.

Taking into account the concept of positive piracy and payment differences among users at home and abroad, Fang Zhe almost asserted after hearing this news that there is a 99% probability that Baidu’s ten billion will be overwhelmed. Ten tenths of a percent may be a miracle!

Although Fang Zhe was not optimistic about Baidu’s move, he did not express any opinions. Now Baidu and Mr. Li have basically fallen into the same trajectory as the previous life, and they have become anxious because of the unsuccessful transformation of mobile. And blindly.

In the previous life, Baidu first spent 1.9 billion US dollars to buy 91 assistants, and then claimed to spend 20 billion to make O2O, and then allinAI. It can be said that this is Baidu Li's anxiety and blindness, or it can be said that this is Baidu's own. Money willful, after all, as the domestic Internet search engine that almost dominates the market, Baidu is still very profitable.

Fang Zhe didn't want to comment on Baidu's approach, but many people wanted Fang Zhe to comment. For example, the 360 ​​Zhou who invited Fang Zhe to dinner!