At 4 a. M. on May 17, 2019, Baidu, Inc. 's earnings release team was busy at the last minute, hurrying to sleep in drowsiness and fatigue. They had no idea at this time that the departure of Xiang Hailong, senior vice president of Baidu, Inc. and president of search company, would be announced by the highest level of the company in an hour. Then, there will be an uproar inside and outside.

The man, who has been rooted for 14 years and is like a "rock" inside Baidu, Inc., quietly bought a suitcase at the end of last year and began to systematically move things from his office and home in Beijing to his home in Shanghai. by the day he left office, the office had been cleaned up. A person who came into close contact with Xiang Hailong called it "ant moving".

Before that, Xiang Hailong had been renting in Beijing. Just after the Spring Festival in 2019, he did not explain the reason to anyone around him. He returned the house he had rented for many years and stayed in the hotel himself.

His assistant, who followed him closely, didn't realize until the official news was released: "Oh, Hailong has withdrawn." "

The news of Xiang Hailong's departure coincided with Baidu, Inc. 's Q1 earnings report in 2019, which set a record for the company to lose money since it went public in 2005, with a net loss of 327 million yuan. With the double negative superposition, Baidu, Inc. 's market value lost 8.9 billion US dollars overnight, falling from 53.8 billion to 44.9 billion US dollars. The decline is close to the $9.3 billion volatilized last May when star manager Lu Qi (formerly president of Baidu, COO) resigned, but at that time his market capitalization was as high as $88.6 billion. For a whole year, the market price of Baidu, Inc. has halved.

Xiang Hailong resigned just in the middle of the storm, and four other executives left in the whirlpool. Caijing learned exclusively that in the past three months, Baidu, Inc. vice presidents Wu Haifeng, Gu Guodong, Zhao Cheng, and executive director Sun Wenyu all resigned. Among them, Zhao Cheng and Sun Wenyu's Last Day in April, Wu Haifeng and Gu Guodong in May, Xiang Hailong in June at the latest. Baidu, Inc. is vice president at the rank of M4mura, and the executive director is M4, who is considered to be a "vice president during the internship".

Many of them are veterans of Baidu, Inc. for more than 10 years-14 years for Xiang Hailong, 13 years for Wu Haifeng, 12 years for Sun Wenyu and 13 years for Zhao Cheng. In addition to Zhao Cheng, who is in charge of government relations, Xiang Hailong, Gu Guodong, Wu Haifeng and Sun Wenyu are all managers of Baidu, Inc. search company.

"Caijing" learned exclusively that after leaving office to Hailong, its "successor" and senior vice president Shen Xie did not directly take over the search company's sales system. Sales are to Hailong's traditional strengths, directly managed by Gu Guodong, and they have not yet found a new replacement after their resignation. Today, Baidu, Inc. has adopted a stopgap measure to set up a "sales management committee" to make the transition, with members including Ma Donmin (Mrs. Robin Li and CEO Special Assistant), Cui Shanshan (vice president of human resources) and Shen Chiu.

The departure of five senior executives, vacant management on the sales side, the boss and the landlady personally went to the front to supervise the war-Baidu, Inc. is on the eve of a byte-beating search war. In the face of the army, the 19-year-old company "lined up again". It was a sleepless and restless night before the war bugle sounded.

The day of the earthquake

"when Lu Qi is going to go, there is a rumor coming out from inside. This time it's amazing. No one knows. I really don't know at all. A middle-level person of Baidu, Inc. search company described the storm to a reporter from Caijing. "there was no change before the incident, but it was an earthquake after the incident. "

Although Xiang Hailong is a senior vice president of the group, he has the most real power, and he has been in office for the longest time in the "lantern"-like rotation of Baidu, Inc. executives (Baidu, Inc. was founded 19 years, he was Baidu, Inc. for 14 years). After the "downfall" of Li Mingyuan, former vice president of Baidu, Inc., Baidu, Inc. set up a search company in April 2016, and Xiang Hailong became the first president of the company.

It was a sudden departure. Just one day ago, a team just went to report to Hailong's office; three days ago, Xiang Hailong attended the weekly meeting of search companies as scheduled; and seven days ago, Xiang Hailong attended the annual Baidu, Inc. Alliance Ecological Partnership Conference in Chengdu and delivered a speech.

Soon Baidu, Inc. issued a hush order. A Baidu, Inc. technical system employee replied to a reporter from Caijing: "there are requirements, no discussion, no comments, no retweets, no interviews." "

On the day of his resignation, Robin Li, chairman and CEO, temporarily convened two internal meetings of the search company, at the level of chief supervisor in the morning and manager in the afternoon. Senior officials attending the meeting included Robin Li, Ma Dongmin and Estaff members. (Estaff is the virtual organization that represents Baidu, Inc. 's highest decision.)

"What'sthe problem?" asked Li Yanhong at the meeting. Then he gave three answers-first, macroeconomic pressure; second, pressure on advertisers' budget; and third, problems with the internal advertising business. A person present believes that the third attribution is that the rectification of the medical advertising business last year fell short of the group's expectations.

"I will lead you forward. "the above-mentioned person relayed his position at the scene to Hailong's successor Shen Zhi," We certainly have a problem, but it is each and every one of us who creates the problem. Shen Zhi was promoted to senior vice president on the same day, and he is trying to stabilize his morale internally.

Both the Q1 financial report and Xiang Hailong's resignation were released at 5: 00 in the morning, and Baidu, Inc. set the tone immediately. In an internal letter sent by Li Yanhong, he described Shen as "strategic vision, dare to fight tough battles and can win battles," and announced his resignation to Hailong in just a few words: "We thank Hailong for his company and contribution over the past 14 years. And wish him all the best in the future. "

The Public Relations Department, which is responsible for external communication, received an emergency notification at 3 am two hours in advance, and they quickly drew up the caliber. A publicist firmly told Caijing that Xiang Hailong should be held responsible for the substandard core performance in the near future and the lack of improvement in the user experience. The resignation of Xiang Hailong and the appointment of Shen Qiu is the result of Baidu, Inc. 's self-innovation, survival of the fittest and the residence of the capable. "it also dispels the idea that sea dragons can't move. "

"the search company panicked. The above-mentioned middle level believes that now is only the beginning of the shock. "when I saw the news, I thought I was going to lose my job. "some people on the inside have even started looking for jobs. However, none of them could tell the truth about the resignation of Hailong, and rumors spread in the company-one of which was that Xiang Hailong was killed by senior executives within two weeks.

A colleague to Hailong told Caijing that Xiang Hailong had a period of confusion in early 2018, when Lu Qi served as COO, reported to Hailong, and then Lu Qi reported to Li Yanhong. "he is very confused about what his role and position are. "but I was just wandering around at that time, and I really made up my mind to resign after Zhong Luqi left last year. Lu's departure essentially accelerated the decision, "because he has become the exit of all contradictions".

According to this colleague, he once privately inferred the situation to Hailong: "Lu Qi has left, should you be promoted to a president or COO at the group level?" Xiang Hailong replied positively at that time that he did not want to be the second person of Baidu, Inc..

The above-mentioned close contact to Hailong said that Xiang Hailong resigned voluntarily this time, but he did not show up at the company on that day. In the afternoon, he left Beijing by high-speed rail and returned to his home in Shanghai.

"Caijing" learned that Baidu, Inc. search company has been reorganized into a "mobile ecological business group", the English name Mobile Ecology Group, referred to as MEG.For three years, Xiang Hailong was the first and last president of the search company, and his resignation marked the end of the era of Baidu, Inc. search company.

The gestation of a storm

The storm was not achieved overnight, but was brewed step by step to today.

News of Xiang Hailong's imminent departure began in 2017. At that time, Gu Peiling, the head of the search company HRBP (Human Resources Business partner), which had been with Baidu, Inc. for 12 years, suddenly resigned to study in the United States. HR is the department that is most sensitive to internal changes, and two people interviewed by Caijing regard Gu's departure as a harbinger of an "earthquake".

For Baidu, Inc., 2017 is a year for outsiders to see hope. The "Wei Zexi incident" put the company in the limelight in 2016, and in early 2017, with the strong arrival of Lu Qi, the "most powerful Chinese in Silicon Valley" and the return of Ma Dongmin, everyone thought Baidu, Inc. had undergone great changes. Ma Dongmin served as CEO Special Assistant, in charge of the War and Investment Department. But then something happened at the group level that alarmed employees for a time.

Caijing learned that after Ma Dongmin returned to the company, he took the lead in setting up Baidu, Inc. 's "personnel Committee" to be responsible for the appointment and promotion of management cadres in the company. Members of the committee include Robin Li, Ma Dongmin, Cui Shanshan and Liu Hui, senior vice president of human resources, who retired in May.Cui Shanshan is "one of Baidu, Inc. 's founding seven swordsmen." like Ma Dongmin, she also returned to Baidu, Inc. in 17 years under the recommendation of Baidu, Inc. elder Ren Xuyang, as "Secretary General of the Culture Commission." she currently succeeds Liu Hui as vice president of human resources.

A person close to Baidu, Inc. believes that since the establishment of the "personnel Committee," the search company has further handed over "human rights" to the group, and the central management cadres have shifted from reporting their duties to the search company promotion committee to the group.

The committee first played a role in the search company when it decided on the appointment of general manager of Baidu, Inc. Alliance. The general manager of the alliance has a three-year term limit, and at the end of 2017, he proposed to Hailong that Guo Langbo, the former head of the operation planning department of the search company, be appointed, but the "personnel committee" decided that the answer was no. (Guo Langbo has resigned)

Cui Fang is the successor of HRBP and Li Zhongjun is the successor of Alliance. Cui Fang is supposed to support the HRBP of non-business, including War Investment, and Li Zhongjun is the former CEO assistant. Internally, they look closer to Robin Li and Ma Dongmin than to their former subordinates in the Hailong system. This is to ensure that management supervises each other's power and transparency.

But sometimes people stationed from the top of the group can interfere with the normal operation of the business, these people said. In one case, the search company once tried an information flow product with a small video in the post bar (somewhat similar to today's Douyin), and War Investment Department sent a young manager, Wang Hanyu, to post it in 2017. he believes that Douyin this product is just a flash in the pan, should be in the post bar to develop "social between acquaintances and strangers", and finally overturn the established direction. Soon after, Hu Yue, general manager of Baidu, Inc. Tieba, left.

In addition to the lack of control over personnel appointment, as the president of the search company, it is an open secret that Xiang Hailong has no financial power from beginning to end. Search company finance needs to go through the group CFO, and CFO reports to CEO. The former group CFO Li Xinyi (JenniferLi) and Xiang Hailong had a mutually restrictive relationship, and the middle level recalled an outbreak of conflict.

CFOThe idea is that the company's profit margin should be guaranteed, even if it shrinks the size of its business, and only "eats" the most profitable part. At a meeting, Xiang Hailong asked in front of his boss: "is the search company a profit guarantee or a profit margin?" A search company manager put in sarcastically: "the profit margin of mobile phone film is very high, do you want to post it?" "

A person familiar with the matter explained to Caijing that the search company is only a virtual company with organizational structure and does not set up a separate company entity, which is essentially a "business group". Baidu, Inc. has always been collectivized management (key decisions are made by the senior management of the group rather than the head of the business department). Not a single senior manager, including Lu Qi, has ever held personnel and financial power.

2017In October 2008, rumors about leaving to Hailong reached a climax. In the conference room of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Zhongguancun, the management of the search company held a strategy seminar here. At the internal meeting of about 20 people, sitting in the middle to Hailong, he said in the first sentence, "I will announce something to you first. I will not leave." "

The rumors became more intense in the following six months, until Lu Qi stepped down as president and COO of Baidu, Inc. on May 18, 2018. Four days later, he took the top executives of the search company to attend the alliance ecological conference, and the rumor finally died down. However, a year later, in the calmest moment of the outside world, he left.

"all the omens began to appear intensively in the second half of last year. "the above mid-level analysis. He can clearly feel that the senior management of the group is beginning to strengthen control-"when evaluating the director, Robin (Robin Li) and Melissa (Ma Dongmin) also have to look, which did not exist before. "

After Lu Qi left office, the internal and external pressure faced by Baidu, Inc. became more prominent. Caijing learned that in the second half of 2018, Baidu, Inc. launched a rectification and reform of medical advertisements. Previously, medical advertising accounted for a relatively high proportion of revenue (about 20%, 25%), but medical advertising often contained false elements. A rectification plan called "landing page hosting" has been launched internally, forcing customers to host promotion pages to Baidu, Inc. for monitoring in order to combat counterfeiting, which is required to be completed by 100% by the end of last year. The plan is mainly aimed at "four products and one weapon" (i.e. drugs, health products, cosmetics, medical supplies, medical devices). A person close to financial information told Caijing that this rectification began to affect revenue in the fourth quarter of last year, probably affecting more than 1 billion yuan in a single quarter.

The internal crackdown comes amid a rapid rise of external forces-Douyin, a byte-beating unit, announced in January that the number of daily active users exceeded 250 million. In the case of changes in the macroeconomic environment and the tightening of the budget of advertisers, the attractiveness of traditional search to advertisers has declined, and the blood-drawing effect of emerging media on Baidu, Inc. has been gradually exposed. "I felt it from August to September last year, but we were grossly underprepared to estimate the difficulties. The above-mentioned people believe that last year's health care reform masked the essential reason for the decline in revenue, "lying on the meritorious book, lack of awe of the external environment."

In the last three months before the storm, faint signs are traceable. According to the above-mentioned people, in March this year, at the monthly meeting attended by both Robin Li and Ma Dongmin, they blamed the sales director of the search company for saying that the revenue was so poor. In April, Baidu, Inc. 's Q1 financial report was originally scheduled to be released on the 20th. The result was delayed to mid-May. In May, Ma Dongmin came out in person, and a week before the results were released, she sent her war investment staff to calculate the search company's income and expenditure for the rest of the third quarter of 2019.

Caijing learned exclusively that Baidu, Inc. had signed a bet for several core executives, and the incomplete betting conditions that the reporter knows so far include: 1 by the end of 2019, with a share price of about $300 billion (equivalent to a market capitalization of hundreds of billions of dollars); and 2, revenue of about 120 billion yuan. If these conditions are fulfilled, executives will have a lot of cash.

The powerful minister Xiang Hailong

Many people don't know that Xiang Hailong is the youngest executive in Estaff, Baidu, Inc. 's highest decision-making organization. He was born in Chongqing in 1977 and is 42 years old.

Studying in the computer Science Department of East China normal University, Xiang Hailong started his business in his junior year. He was the first classmate to spend 10,000 yuan on a "mobile phone". After graduation to establish a registered company-Shanghai Qilang Network Technology Co., Ltd., this company and Baidu, Inc. were established in 2000, and later become the agents of Baidu, Inc., Alphabet Inc-CL C, Sina and so on. Shanghai Qilang was funded by a Wenzhou entrepreneur whose sister later became Xiang's wife.

Thanks to Li Yanhong's appreciation, Baidu, Inc. launched the acquisition of Shanghai Enterprise Wave before going public in 2005, which was conducted by Zhang Lei, founder and CEO of today's Hillhouse Capital. As a result, 28-year-old Xiang Hailong joined Baidu, Inc., starting his 14-year career.

In Baidu, Inc., the power of Hailong expanded all the way. The first identity he got was the general manager of the Shanghai branch. A year later, when the bet expired, Robin Li put him in charge of the Beijing branch and turned the results around for three months. He had planned to return to Shanghai from Beijing, but Robin Li promoted him directly to vice president of sales and Estaff member in 2007 to retain him. At this time, Xiang Hailong was less than 30 years old, younger than Li Mingyuan, who was once known as the "prince" and "youngest vice president"-Li Mingyuan was promoted to vice president Baidu, Inc. at the age of 31.

Then Xiang Hailong successively "replaced" the positions of many senior executives such as Baidu, Inc. Vice President Shi Youcai, Wang Zhan and Li Mingyuan. As these people left, Robin Li assigned all the business they left behind to Xiang-Baidu, Inc. has more than 30, 000 people in the company and manages about 20, 000 from Hailong, while the search company acts as Baidu, Inc. 's "cash cow", contributing more than 70% of revenue. At this point, the search company returned a large part of Baidu, Inc. 's core business, and the top of the power of the search company is Xiang Hailong. Before resigning, he was also chairman of Baidu, Inc. 's PC (Product Design Committee), while the chairman of TC (Technical Committee) was Zhang Yaqin, president of the company.

As a powerful executive in Baidu, Inc., many people have the impression that he is patient, knowledgeable, and has a city government. Xiang Hailong seldom sits directly next to Robin Li or Ma Dongmin in meetings. The general scene is that Robin Li sits on the side of PPT, Ma Dongmin sits opposite the conference table, and Xiang Hailong sits not far away from the two, keeping a relatively safe distance. When Robin Li has questions about the details of the business, Xiang will come up to him and lie down on the table to demonstrate to him.

"most of the time, he will step back first. An employee of a search company told Caijing that Robin Li would often ask about the project himself, and the usual practice for Hailong was to step aside. Whenever faced with a decision, Xiang Hailong would say to his staff, "you go and consult Robin." after a period of time, Robin Li stepped back behind the scenes, and he came out as a conductor again. "sometimes Robin will rush forward, sea dragons are shrinking, and the two of them will always be the relationship between you and me. "

During his tenure, Xiang Hailong kept a very low profile, especially did not like to appear in public, but he was the most rumored executive. "he has been hiding in a low profile, but he can't hide. After all, he is stuck in a whirlpool and can't wash himself. "the above said to Hailong's colleagues.

Although he is introverted, he shows a fierce side in business. Close to the sea dragon, he especially likes to watch "Animal World." his opponent once said that except for human beings, most of the animals in the world starved to death. An elephant may lose its life when it sprains its ankle. As a result, he warned his subordinates, "Don't make a mistake."

After the establishment of the search company, the strategy of hand and information flow was proposed to Hailong in mid-2016. Under this strategy, the person in charge at that time reported a budget of 2.4 billion. After the approval of the group, Xiang Hailong said to him alone: "I gave you the money. If this thing is screwed up, a thousand cuts will be cut into pieces." "

Caijing learned that the red envelope campaign of Baidu, Inc. 's Spring Festival Gala in 2019 cost 1 billion yuan, including 400 million CCTV bids and 600 million red envelopes. This is the first time in history that Baidu, Inc. has spent a lot of money on brand advertising. At that time, many people at the top opposed it, and Robin Li hesitated for a while and signed his name to Hailong "holding his head". When bidding, Baidu, Inc. faces the biggest competitor is byte jump. According to people familiar with the matter, one of the bids was a red packet campaign and the other was a video event, with the former starting at 400m and the latter at 250 million. Finally, under the leadership of Xiang, Baidu, Inc. won the red packet activity with a rock-bottom price of 400m, while Byte Jump spent 500m yuan on video activities. The thousand-member team of the Spring Festival Gala campaign won the "Major Breakthrough Award" in Baidu, Inc..

Li Yanhong once said internally that senior executives should "fight to the death of generals and literary ministers to death."

Over the years, Xiang Hailong's image has been more like the "negative" of Robin Li and many Baidu, Inc. executives. "he is the most approachable one of them. The aforementioned middle level told Caijing that Xiang Hailong did not feel as gentle as Robin Li, but was "shrewd, neat, and capable." He attaches great importance to collecting information and sometimes asks his subordinates in the early hours of the morning. He will cross-check with all the people in the group. The style of the meeting is a discussion of a strong business, interrupting each other bluntly from time to time: "that's not right. I heard XX say that's not the case." Unlike Robin Li's pursuit of perfectionism, Xiang Hailong's view is that "there are rotten bricks without rotten walls."

Xiang Hailong pays special attention to cost control and its investment style is relatively conservative. After learning that a subordinate had bought a 400000 car, he said seriously to him by his name, "you are driving a luxury car." "in addition, he is keen to buy houses, and rarely buy villas, mostly choose about 120 square meters Huxing, easy to change hands.

"Caijing" learned that Baidu, Inc. has two capital movement changes related to Xiang Hailong. One is the clearance of Baidu, Inc. takeout. Xiang Hailong was once one of the executives who most opposed the O2O strategy. When Baidu, Inc. gave up O2O to the artificial intelligence track, the executives wanted to return Baidu, Inc. takeout and glutinous rice to the search company. Refuse to accept Baidu, Inc. takeout to Hailong, which to a certain extent prompted the spin-off of Baidu, Inc. takeout. Second, Baidu, Inc. was prepared to strategically invest in the shared bike brand ofo, and Xiang Hailong held many meetings against Ma Dongmin, urging her to give up this investment. The view is that takeout and bicycles are AT payment weapons in times of war.

The above colleagues said that if you regard user products and commercial products as the two engines that make up the plane, since Yu Jun resigned in 2009 (the former vice president of products Baidu, Inc. was promoted to VP in the same year as Xiang Hailong, known as the "father of Baidu, Inc. Tieba"), it is equivalent to one of Baidu, Inc. 's engines stalled. "if it hadn't been for sea dragons in this decade, this plane wouldn't have been able to fly today. According to the Q1 financial report, Baidu, Inc. now has 157.8 billion yuan in cash and short-term financial assets, many of which are attributed to the commercial realization of Hailong.

An Internet practitioner said that if Xiang Hailong's fault must be said, it is that his sales ability is too strong, making it easy for Baidu, Inc. to realize, failing to be vigilant and missing the opportunity.

Reset the chessboard

Ma Dongmin and Cui Shanshan had a conversation with an executive before he left recently. According to the report, they raised a question in the conversation-what is everyone's responsibility for Baidu, Inc. 's situation today, where there is no breakthrough in market capitalization? Robin itself is taking responsibility, what responsibility should others bear? This conversation is thought to be the beginning of a downward blame at the top of the group, as a result of the Douyin track mistake being put on the table.

Over the past year, Byte Jump has developed by leaps and bounds in Douyin and internationalization, and at the beginning of this year they quietly launched an online search engine and officially launched an attack against Baidu, Inc. search. Baidu, Inc. had to integrate the flow of information and search to prevent the enemy from breaking through.2In April, search companies launched a round of shifts with the main purpose of facing the enemy, but unexpectedly triggered more executives to leave.

Under the structure of the original search company, Xiang Hailong has a total of four vice president-level "generals", namely, Shen Qiu, who is in charge of Mobile and Feed, Wu Haifeng, who is in charge of search, Zheng Zibin, who is in charge of commercial products, and Gu Guodong, who is in charge of sales. Among them, Shen Qiu is to recruit Baidu, Inc. to Hailong, and he is also the "successor" who was chosen a long time ago. According to the comprehensive evaluation of many people, unlike Xiang Hailong, Shen is more outgoing; he has a high EQ, attention to detail, gentle and receptive to good advice.

The original intention of this rotation is to let Shen Qiu manage the flow of information and search, and improve internal efficiency against the enemy. So the organizational restructuring will merge the search that Wu Haifeng is responsible for directly to Shen Qiu, who will fully take over the user product (hand hundred + Feed+ search); Wu Haifeng will take over Zheng Zibin's commercial product (Fengnest); and Zheng Zibin will be transferred to take charge of the CRM-based innovation business.

In the search company, Shen Qiu and Wu Haifeng have always been seen as competitors. Shen joined Baidu, Inc. in 2012, six years after Wu Haifeng. Both were search business directors, but Shen transferred to Baidu, Inc. Finance. Wu Haifeng continued to search, during which time the two men rose to executive director. Shen was later transferred back to the search company, and both were promoted to vice presidents in 17 years. Last year, the Shen team launched "Baijia" and the Wu team launched "Xiong Zhang", which won the competition.

This rotation has hurt Wu Haifeng's interests. Wu Haifeng does not agree to the rotation, but the company has already announced it. "the above-mentioned person close to Baidu, Inc. said. He was instructed to "overhaul" commercial products. However, as soon as the news came out, Sun Wenyu was the first to resign. Sun Wenyu is Wu Haifeng's newly promoted executive director, the executive director in Baidu, Inc. means "trainee vice president", she is in charge of the core search business. After Wu Haifeng was transferred, Sun Wenyu's ascending channel was blocked and he was the first to resign, followed by Wu Haifeng. After that, Gu Guodong did not agree with him because his sales performance was not up to expectations and the senior management was blamed, and he also submitted his resignation.

Baidu, Inc. is facing an awkward situation at this stage-in the mobile ecological business group, except Shen Qiu is a senior vice president, there is only one vice president of innovation business. While Shen Qiu's past experience is mainly concentrated on the user side, the business and sales foundation is not deep. According to Caijing, after the resignation, the vice president of business and sales is in an empty window. At the same time, Shen did not take over the sales directly. For the smooth transition of power, Ma Dongmin, Cui Shanshan and Shen Qiu temporarily set up a three-member committee to manage it together.

Robin Li has also been deeply involved in the search company business. Li Yanhong has personally led the information stream since November 2017. he appeared punctually at 8 o'clock every morning at Building 5, Baidu, Inc. Science Park, and had an early meeting with Shen and his directors. In 2018, the flow of information was on track, and Robin Li took a short break. In the second half of the year, he went on to hold weekly meetings with search companies, which were held all day on Monday, with users in the morning and business in the afternoon.

And a series of changes have taken place at the group level. Caijing published an article entitled "Lu Qi raised a knife and Baidu, Inc. reshuffled his cabinet for the third time" in April 2018, which combed through Baidu, Inc. 's list of high-level changes from 2000 to 2018 and divided personnel changes into three rounds, which has now been updated.

Baidu, Inc. launched a high-level retirement plan this year, with two heavyweight executives, Zhang Yaqin, the company's president, who will retire in July, and Liu Hui, a senior vice president of human resources, retiring in May. They are all members of Estaff.

Early on, Baidu, Inc. began to break up the emerging Business Group (EBG) under Zhang Yaqin's jurisdiction. In December last year, the smart cloud division was upgraded to an independent business group (ACG); the basic technology system (TG) was assigned to senior vice president Wang Haifeng; in March this year, Baidu, Inc. gave the library, reading and search company (now renamed Mobile Ecological Business Group); in May, the education 2B direction was spun off into the smart cloud business group.

In terms of human resources, Cui Shanshan took over from Liu Hui, and there is a view that one of the purposes of setting up the "personnel Committee" is for Li Yanhong and Ma Dongmin to help Cui Shanshan hand over human resources. Since her return, Baidu, Inc. executives have shifted from recruiting professional managers with glamorous backgrounds to recalling Baidu. "Caijing" learned that in the past year, Zhang Dongchen (former assistant to the president) returned to Baidu, Inc. as vice president of business development, triggering a wave of return; and Baidu, Inc. 's executives introduced from abroad are Lu Yuan, former vice president and global partner of Bain, and Yuan Foyu, former general manager of NetEase, Inc's marketing department, and serve as Baidu, Inc. 's vice president of strategy and vice president of marketing.

In order to promote internal exchanges, Lu Qi implemented the "Xinfeng Society" in Baidu, Inc., which was retained after he left office, and Cui Shanshan renamed it "Internal Communication Association".

According to the exclusive knowledge of Caijing, after the resignation, Baidu, Inc. is looking for a successor to various positions. Among them, the vice president of government relations will be an "old Baidu"; they also contacted Meitu COO Cheng Yu, hoping that he would take the position of commercial vice president, but the negotiations did not seem to be successful. In addition, Baidu, Inc. is likely to start a round of layoffs, according to two people close to Baidu. "it feels like a storm is coming. "one of the employees said.

Resignation, retirement and restructuring mean that Baidu, Inc. is "resetting the chessboard" on the eve of the war. A great battle is both a challenge and an opportunity for this company, which is about to win a weak crown. The newlyweds took the torch from their predecessors and shouldered a more arduous mission.

The night before the full outbreak of the war was darker than usual. Soldiers swam back and forth between the two armies under the pressure of darkness. The enemy offered a seductive salary to dig Baidu, Inc. 's capable general, some readily agreed, some resolutely guarded, and some shook their heads away from the gunfire.

This is a battle that cannot be defeated. A management in Baidu, Inc. for more than 10 years told Caijing: "if Baidu, Inc. loses this battle, the Internet in China is still BAT, but BAT will be reborn, and this B will be changed from Baidu to Bytedance (byte jump). "

A colleague once asked him if you would add byte jumps. The above-mentioned person replied angrily: "then I am on the opposite side of myself for the past 10 years." "