Chapter 285: Qian Du Critically Injured, Google Lightly Injured, Lingxi Small Victory

At 10:30 a. m., Qian Du lifted the ban on 360 products.

Ten minutes later, 360 synchronized with Qian Du's move.

The 3B war reached a pause; the technical warfare and public relations mudslinging between the two finally ended, but immediately entered the stage of legal maneuvering.

Qian Du sued 360 for bypassing the robots crawler protocol to rapidly acquire content, illegally scraping data, and demanded compensation of one hundred million yuan in economic losses.

360 countersued, accusing Qian Du of using the robots protocol to create a monopoly in the search engine market.

Zhou Hongyi was not the type to suffer losses; while actively defending the lawsuit, he opened fire on Weibo: "Monopoly is the greatest evil in this world, because it makes users lose their choice! And Qian Du's problems are not just monopoly, but also malicious bundling of software, products that are hard to uninstall, and cannot be completely deleted; isn't this just rogue software?"

Netizens in the comments section joked: "This is truly a monk cursing a thief monk, a rogue beating a hooligan; in a word, there are no righteous wars in the Spring and Autumn period!"

The implication was that neither 360 nor Qian Du were anything good.

But Zhou Hongyi did not care; after all, 360 Search had already won big.

Before the war started, 360 Search's market share was 0; after the war started, it was 8.59%, leaping to become the second-largest search engine product in the country.

On the other side.

Xu City, Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park, Building No. 9.

Chen Yansen sat in his office and opened the work email sent by Zhang Yiming.

Lingxi Browser had accumulated 61 million users, with 37 million active users, a market share of 10.3%, ranking fourth, only behind UC, QQ, and Opera browsers, and ahead of Qian Du and Dolphin Browser.

Lingxi Search's market share was 4.07%, only below Qian Du, 360, and Sogou; Google Greater China's market share plummeted to 3.49%, completely becoming the industry's fifth place.

Sogou Search's user usage rate fluctuated little, but Qian Du Search's market share dropped from 75.44% in early August all the way to 64.68%, shrinking by 14.26%.

Qian Du critically injured, Google lightly injured, Sogou stabilized.

Lingxi and 360 Search both won!

"Zhou Hongyi looks silly, but his mind is sharper than anyone else's; no wonder he can still eat from the bowl of internet celebrity fame more than ten years later!"

Chen Yansen lifted his teacup, took a sip, and said with a faint smile.

Old Zhou graduated with a master's degree at twenty-five, started as a state-owned enterprise programmer, was promoted to department manager one year later, and went into business to found the 3721 project three years later. Five years later, he sold 3721 to Yahoo for 120 million US dollars, personally receiving 80 million US dollars.

It was now 2003, and the per capita income in Hu City was still less than 20,000 yuan.

However, in Chen Yansen's view, Zhou Hongyi's layout ability was too poor; perhaps it was a bad habit formed from being an investor early on: whatever the market liked, he did, but every time he dared not go all out.

Resources were scattered, ultimately leading to failure at the last step.

His style of conduct was like a double-firecracker; one spark and it explodes!

In fact, whether regarding Zhou Hongyi, Lei Yijun, or Ma Wenteng, Li Yanhong, and Ma Liyun, Chen Yansen had no subjective emotions.

They are businessmen; pursuing profit is enough!

Of course, once they step on his bottom line, he will fight back without hesitation!

Li Yanhong's investment in DiDi Dache caused him considerable trouble, so he immediately launched Lingxi Search, forcibly snatching 4.07% of the market share from Qian Du's bowl.

Just as he was pondering, the mobile phone on the table rang.

Chen Yansen came to his senses, extended his hand, and the phone automatically flew into his palm; he glanced at the caller ID, then pressed the answer key.

"Boss, Qian Du has acquired Lashou. com and added a 'Eat, Drink, Play, and Have Fun' section on Qian Du Maps; this guy Li Yanhong is too shameless, copying Gao De Maps' O2O strategy one-to-one."

Xiao Jun went straight to the point, cursing with great momentum.

"The same plan, executed by different people, often yields two completely opposite results; let him copy; whoever is worse will be the one in an awkward position."

Chen Yansen took it lightly and said slowly.

After all, there was no copyright to speak of in the internet industry, especially in 2012.

"Okay, Boss, I understand." After hearing this, Xiao Jun gritted his teeth and replied, planning to counter Qian Du's actions from a commercial level.

In the field of electronic maps and navigation software, Gao De is the big brother.

Xiao Jun was confident that in project operations, he would absolutely not lose to Qian Du Maps.

Chen Yansen did not rush to hang up the phone but asked about the progress of Gao De Maps' promotion in local life scenarios.

After the two chatted for more than twenty minutes, Chen Yansen slowly put down the phone.

Two weeks ago, Zhu Xiaohu had called him, probing his price bottom line.

Chen Yansen quoted 240 million US dollars at the time. This valuation was calculated comprehensively by Gao Weilin based on Lashou. com's business and financial data, market share, industry prospects, and other information; it was not a price he set off the top of his head.

Since Jin Sha Ventures, Maiton Investment, and Renet Fund sold Lashou. com to Qian Du, it must be that Li Yanhong's offer was higher.

But he did not care too much; there were still several group-buying websites similar to Lashou. com; missing Lashou, there were still Nuomi, Dianping, Wowo Tuan, and even Meituan.

As for whether Wang Xin would sell Meituan?

Chen Yansen would not hesitate at all on this issue.

As long as Kuai Pao and Lashou forced Meituan into a dead end, under the conditions of capital shortage and inability to secure financing, Wang Xin would have only two choices: either die or sell out.

Qian Du acquiring Lashou. com meant the first person to be targeted was Wang Xin, the second target was Dianping, and only the third might be Kuai Pao.

Thinking of this, Chen Yansen opened his computer and quickly found the relevant report on the homepage of Qian Du News.

"Qian Du takes over Lashou. com for 420 million US dollars, creating the largest acquisition record in the group-buying market!"

"Group Buying + Travel! Qian Du throws heavy money, fully exerting force to promote local life services!"

420 million US dollars?

Chen Yansen furrowed his brow slightly; he was unsure how much water was in this figure, but he estimated the actual transaction figure should be around 400 million.

Two weeks ago, Zhu Xiaohu's quote was 320 million US dollars; in the blink of an eye, it rose by another 100 million US dollars.

This guy Li Yanhong is truly a sucker!

Chen Yansen couldn't help but curse inwardly; if Qian Du had not interfered, Senlian Capital's speaking power in the ride-hailing and group-buying markets would surely far exceed the current development status.

But as he thought again, his mindset instantly calmed down.

Without Qian Du, other big capitals would appear.

As far as he knew, Zhu Nanli of Junlian Capital had privately communicated with Xu Xin of Today Capital, Wang Qiong of Seaya Ventures, and Zhang Lei of Gao Ling Capital, wanting to push Liu Yiqing to the CEO position of DiDi Dache.

It's just that Baidu's shareholding ratio was too high, so he didn't succeed, that's all.

With Liu Yiqing's network of connections, even without leveraging Lenovo and the Liu family's influence, she could easily pull in investment from Australia, Europe, and America.

The other party had been at Gao Sheng for over a decade, and must have abundant connections and resources in hand.

Compared with Liu Yiqing, the indecisive Li Yanhong was clearly much easier to deal with.

When the losses from the subsidy war reached Li Yanhong's psychological upper limit, that would be the beginning of negotiations between the two sides.

That afternoon, Kuaima went live with a meal card top-up event, the gameplay identical to Kuaidi Dache; with no competitors holding it back, within six hours of going live it set a revenue record of 590 million yuan.

After firmly establishing a foothold in Hui'an, Sujiang, Hucheng, and Jiangzhe, Pei Yi immediately 'marched north,' centering on Yanjing, Tianjin, Changshan, Tang Cheng, and other places, rapidly spreading outward to surrounding prefecture-level cities, preparing to take the North China market in one fell swoop.

Gao De, Kuaima, and Kuaidi Dache's businesses complemented one another; the three products achieved ecological complementarity in traffic and commercial monetization, and both daily active data and user stickiness made considerable progress.

Chen Yansen, before getting off work, received a call from Ma Wenteng, then with a face full of puzzlement couldn't help muttering to himself: what is this guy coming to Xucheng for?

Having no time to think it over, he pushed the door and walked out, calling Zhou Shouzhi, Ye Qiuping, and Gao Weilin to accompany him.

Three minutes later, a panda-colored Rolls-Royce Ghost and a Bentley Mulsanne, one ahead and one behind, sped out of the tech park, racing toward the direction of the downtown area.

At the same time.

Chen Yizhou of Renren, upon seeing the news of Baidu's acquisition, only then realized he had been played by Li Yanhong.

"Damn it! He strung me along for a whole month."

The emotionally agitated Chen Yizhou blurted out his long-unheard hometown accent from his mouth; after a moment's thought, he called Chen Yansen again.

"Beep… beep… beep…"

Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds — no one picked up at all.

Could it be that Chen Yansen had also given up on the plan to acquire group-buy websites?

Chen Yizhou immediately panicked; Nuomi was losing two to three million US dollars every month, and every month it was sold later meant he lost a villa in Hucheng.

Apart from Chen Yansen, he really couldn't find any decent buyers domestically.

One had to know that the venture capital firms confident in the group-buy business had already entered the group-buy track at the beginning of 2011.

By now it had already reached the 'five-into-four' finals — how could there possibly be an investor who would suddenly switch group-buy products and pivot to a new one?

On the other side, Chen Yansen had just gotten out of the car, stepped into the Sky Garden, and saw Ma Wenteng walking toward him.

(End of this chapter)