Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Chen Yansen couldn’t care less. After all, the legal representative of Byte Technology was Zhang Yiming. If the bigwigs up top couldn’t stand it anymore, Zhang Yiming would be the one to suffer.

On its first day live, 360 Search leveraged the traffic advantages of the 360 Browser and its navigation site to rapidly seize search market share, rocketing from 0 to 1.09%.

Over half of Google Search’s Chinese traffic came from 360’s navigation site. After Zhou Hongyi changed the default search engine to 360 Search, Google bore the brunt of it, immediately losing 16.7% of its market share in Hua Country.

At that moment, Liu Yun, the head of Google’s Great China Region, was completely baffled and couldn’t help but curse out loud, ’Isn’t 360 supposed to be fighting Qian Du? Why is the gun pointed at Google’s head?’

On the first day of the battle between 360 and Qian Du Search, Qian Du was unscathed, while Google was left black and blue.

On the second day, 360 Search’s market share rose to 2.63%.

On the third day, 360 Search’s market share rose to 3.91%.

Li Yanhong was getting antsy. He felt that Zhou Hongyi’s offensive was a bit too fierce, but if 360 wanted to do search, could he really stop them?

On August 6th, Lingxi Search quietly launched without any announcement. Leveraging the 30 million-plus users of the Lingxi Browser, it quickly carved out a private plot of land for itself.

On August 7th, 360 Search’s market share rose to 5.84%.

Meanwhile, Qian Du also discovered 360’s dirty tricks. 360’s encyclopedia not only plagiarized entries from Qian Du Baike but also openly bypassed the Robots protocol, using Qian Du’s data as its own.

Qian Du immediately responded for the first time on its official Weibo account: ”We welcome competition from our peers, but we oppose unscrupulous acts of infringement.”

It also tagged @Zhou Hongyi, demanding that 360 immediately cease its illegal scraping activities.

Zhou Hongyi saw it, smiled, and pretended he hadn’t. He continued doing as he pleased, even going so far as to block Hao123, a navigation site under Qian Du.

Any user who had 360 Security Guard installed would get an interception prompt when they tried to open the Hao123 navigation site: ”This site may be attempting to steal your personal or financial information.”

The method was shameless, but the effect was remarkable.

After 360’s meddling, Hao123’s traffic for the day immediately dropped by 14.2%.

One had to understand that in 2012, 360 Security Guard’s install base was as high as 470 million, meaning this thing was on the computers of almost 80% of all internet users.

Of course, this also included a portion of users who wanted to uninstall it but couldn’t.

Faced with Zhou Hongyi’s rogue tactics, Li Yanhong couldn’t stand it anymore. He immediately launched a counterattack, blocking 360 Search’s access to Qian Du Zhidao, Qian Du Baike, and Tieba. When 360 users clicked on those search results, they were forcibly redirected to Qian Du’s homepage.

Zhou Hongyi reacted quickly as well, replacing all of Qian Du’s products on the 360 navigation site—like Qian Du News, Maps, and MP3—with Toutiao, Gaode Map, and Sogou Music.

The two had completely torn off all pretenses!

Immediately after, Zhou Hongyi posted on Weibo, cursing, ”Qian Du Antivirus is rogue software that users can’t uninstall. The 360 security team will soon create a dedicated plugin for users to uninstall Qian Du Antivirus.”

When Chen Yansen saw Lao Zhou’s post, he couldn’t help but blush for him.

The netizens couldn’t hold it in either!

Everyone knew full well how Zhou Hongyi had made his fortune.

The old rogue was denouncing the big rogue!

Elsewhere in Yanjing, Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan stared at the previous week’s business report, his brows furrowed in a knot.

Although Sogou Search primarily gained traffic through its own browser and paid channels, with little user overlap with 360 and Qian Du, there were still some shared users.

Sogou’s market share had dropped from 7.44% to 7.21%. The decline wasn’t huge, but it still left Wang Xiaochuan deeply annoyed.

He looked down on Qian Du’s monopolistic behavior, but he also despised 360’s rogue conduct.

As Wang Xiaochuan scrolled through the flame war between Zhou Hongyi and Qian Du on Weibo, he curled his lip in disdain. ’Lao Zhou is up to his old tricks. Hype up the public opinion before the product even launches.’

’Win or lose, the important thing is to get his fill of cursing first.’