Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

’Senlian Capital, Penguin, 360, and Sohu are powerful,’ he thought, ’but would they dare to go against the authorities?’

What he didn’t know, however, was that the Information Association and the Internet Association simply paid lip service. After hanging up, they tossed their phones aside and did nothing.

From the perspective of the higher-ups, Qian Du Network’s dominance in the search sector, where it held 60% to 70% of the market share, ran counter to the regulatory trend against internet monopolies.

Although Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng, Zhou Hongyi, and Zhang Chaoyang had not received any official directive, their actions were aligned with the needs of the times.

When, by the third day, no reprimanding calls had come from the regulators, Zhou Hongyi had a revelation. He immediately intensified his attack, completely blocking all of Qian Du’s products within his company’s software ecosystem.

He then convened a conference for channel partners, pushed a Cost Per Sale (CPS) advertising model, and began aggressively poaching Qian Du’s agents, unscrupulously carrying out his plan to tear them out by the roots.

He was stealing users on one front and poaching agents on the other.

Lingxi Search, Penguin, and Sogou Search also launched similar advertising policies to lure away Qian Du’s agents.

Chen Yansen’s move was the classic ”kill ten thousand enemies, but lose eight hundred of your own men.”

The single blow left Li Yanhong completely stunned.

At this point, he had no time to worry about anything else. He scrambled to increase loyalty training for his agents and strengthen regional controls in an attempt to stabilize his agency network.

But what loyalty could one expect from businessmen?

Agents would flock to whoever offered lower fees, more users, and an easier way to make money.

While the top-tier agents looked down on Lingxi, Penguin, and Sogou Search, the mid- and low-tier agents, along with those who had been dropped for failing to meet KPIs, were all snapped up by the three companies.

Zhou Hongyi was the most ruthless of them all. To secure agents, he even offered commission rebates of 30-40%.

Normally, when a business bought ad credits for Qian Du’s system, it went through an agent, who would earn a 15-25% commission.

Lao Zhou came in and immediately doubled that rate.

He refused to believe there was anyone who didn’t love money.

As it turned out, Zhou Hongyi’s tactics were precise and vicious, leaving Li Yanhong completely overwhelmed.

Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng, and Wang Xiaochuan followed suit, using low prices to aggressively woo Qian Du Network’s service agents.

CNZZ, a third-party monitoring agency highly sensitive to traffic fluctuations, released a report on industry data changes on May 8th.

Before the war began, the traffic market share was: Qian Du at 66.4%, 360 Search at 8.5%, Lingxi at 8.3%, Sogou at 7.1%, and Penguin at 1.4%.

Three days later, it was: Qian Du at 59.4%, Lingxi at 9.7%, 360 Search at 8.9%, Sogou at 7.3%, and Penguin at 1.6%.

Sogou and Penguin were more passive, acting like minions cheering from the sidelines.

Lingxi and 360 were the most ferocious.

The media dubbed this search engine conflict the ”3SB War.”

The ”3” represented 360, the ”S” represented Senlian Capital, and the ”B” represented Qian Du.

On May 8th, as soon as the stock market in the Lighthouse Country opened, Qian Du Network’s stock price immediately dropped. It opened at 87.3 US dollars per share and fell to 82.6 US dollars in less than ten minutes.

Investors across the ocean got the news as well. With Qian Du Network’s situation looking grim, many chose to sell off their stock.

By the market’s close, Qian Du Network’s stock price had fallen below 80 US dollars a share, and its market capitalization had shrunk by 2.2 billion US dollars.

Only three days had passed since Chen Yansen initiated the ”3SB War.”

The next morning, Lingxi Search added an artificial intelligence module to its homepage, which could be considered a combination of search and a rudimentary language model.

Compared to the competing products that would emerge over a decade later, this little plug-in, named ”Moss,” was actually quite rudimentary.

But it changed the face of search engine services in 2013.

Previously, when users searched for a question, they had to find the answer within the search results page. ”Moss,” however, gave the answer directly.