By CUI Peng

Over 600 million people use Baidu every month. Today, the search engine has found itself three main driving engines: self-driving technology for a better future, cloud computing which is making steady progress, and mobile business, the main driver of the company's growth and the one that fuels its cloud computing and AI ambitions.

As head of the Mobile Ecosystem Group (MEG) in charge of Baidu's mobile business, SHEN Dou has played a big part in shaping Baidu’s search engine business and was behind many of its mobile products.

When Jiemian News talked to Shen in October, he spoke of how the mobile business constantly reinvents itself and the need for new goals. Baidu understands what people want and is best placed to connect them to their needs, said Shen. He planned to engage in-depth with more users and come up with more specialized products.

Jiemian: Baidu’s monthly active users exceeded 600 million in July, but daily active user users remain more or less the same. Do you think Baidu has reached a plateau?

Shen: To me, 600 million is a new start. Our users are still becoming more diverse. There’s a lot of untapped demand from old people, young people, and people in rural areas. We launched a large-font version of the Baidu app this year, and its monthly active users exceeded 500,000 in just a few months. It’s a new way of looking at things.

We are making ourselves more accessible and imaginative. Many people do not find what they want on the first try. Questions they typed can be very colloquial, and probably need some follow-ups to get the right answer, just like in a normal conversation.

Of course, there’s the question of monetizing our engagement numbers. What we get today is far from enough. We still make most of our money from ads. Bilibili makes money from subscriptions, games, and ads. Douyin has e-commerce. We want to be better at all kinds of activities. Come to Baidu to talk to a doctor, watch live streams or pay for high-quality, curated content.

Jiemian: But isn’t that incompatible with the very purpose of a search engine? To find what you want and move on?

Shen: That’s why we want to create a new way of searching. A conventional search engine that directs users to content but does not produce its own. A user wants to go to the cinema and types in the name of a movie. Baidu takes her to a ticket seller and she knows to go to the ticket seller directly next time. Baidu is out of the picture.

Now, after the movie, she may want to talk about it with other viewers, buy merchandise or watch something else of the same genre. Consumer needs are spontaneous and idiosyncratic. No social media platform or shopping website can control them although they all claim otherwise. Baidu is in the best position to understand what people want and connect everyone along each step of the way, and the connection - the search - is always started by the users.

Jiemian: How do all these affect daily active users? When will they be up?

Shen: Daily active users are above 220 million and are going up. MEG generates Baidu’s cash. We can make monthly numbers look very nice by, say, buying ads, but if daily numbers are lagging behind, that’s not high-quality growth. Previously, they came only to search. Now we are better at initiating and coordinating activities.

Jiemian: How do you want the stock market to think of Baidu?

Shen: It’s a portfolio with many fronts of growth. We have MEG, the cloud, and self-driving. They are all doing well.

The mobile business itself is a diverse portfolio on its own. It's growing both horizontally and vertically. Platform wide, both the number of users and quality of engagement are improving. In terms of specialized products, healthcare, automobile, and business services are all making good progress.

We don’t make full use of web traffic, though, and need to do better. We look at the numbers every month and are constantly making adjustments. We have overhauled underperforming products, such as automobiles and enterprise services. Both are looking good now.

Jiemian: Some would argue that Baidu was late to the mobile game.

Shen: We weren’t the earliest. The entire industry was trying to figure it out. At first, our mobile apps were run separately from the web page, and there was some debate on what the app should be like, more specifically, whether it should provide users with information only, or take a step further and connect them with service providers.

There was a lot of trial and error until we realized that we had to do both. The bottom line is this: People want more than simply to be presented with a page of information. Our mobile app encourages people to do as many things as possible within the Baidu ecosystem. We have clarified what we want for the platform as a whole and for each specialized unit. 

Jiemian: With the mobile app, Baidu Maps, and Baidu Wangpan (cloud storage) well set, do you have plans for another integrated app?

Shen: We are certainly trying. Haokan Video is an example. Breakthroughs in products have generally come with breakthroughs in devices. With no major device upgrades on the radar, it’s unclear how the next great product will come to be. That being said, there is still much unmet demand in video apps, and that’s what we are trying to explore. Haokan is focused on learning new things while having fun.

Jiemian: How do you evaluate innovative projects?

Shen: Innovative projects have their own metrics and there’s some tolerance for loss.

Speed and pace matter too. You can’t have a big launch every three years and be absolutely quiet in between, no matter how revolutionary the big launches are. There should be small, interesting things coming out constantly.

On the other hand, we can’t invest in too many things all at once. The mobile business is synchronized with the rest of Baidu, so we prioritize projects that address unmet demand and benefit other Baidu products.

Jiemian: Are you afraid of losing younger users if Baidu doesn’t keep pace with changing fashions?

Shen: Young people will always use search engines and we have different strategies for different age groups. Soon there will be products for college students, for example.

A bigger challenge about innovation is, whether and when we pursue something completely untested. We have a clear path to growth. Engagement numbers are steadily improving, so we are now bolder in trying new things.

Jiemian: What’s your expectation for the video market? Are you happy to take whatever is left?

Shen: I would be lying if I told you I’d be happy with that. However, there would have been nothing left if existing products had already met all their users’ needs. Haokan is not following Douyin or Kuaishou. We are trying to do something our competitors don’t. It’s about the patience and perseverance to find our own niche. Burning money doesn’t solve anything in the long run. Haokan doesn’t want to be the next Douyin, or anything else.

Jiemian: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology wants a more open internet. What does that mean for you?

Shen: Baidu 100 percent supports opening up. The internet should be open, democratic, and collaborative. Some tech companies go out of their way to keep users on their own platforms only. This impedes information sharing, hurts innovation, and sometimes even spreads misinformation.

Users want a more open internet and that’s the way of the future. And only by being open can the internet be more efficient, more innovative, and more user-friendly.

Baidu is an open platform. Our mini programs are open source, so other companies can use our technology in their own apps and websites. Our AI is also open source. PaddlePaddle, our deep learning tool, is open to all developers and enterprises. Anyone can build their own application with it.