Lu Qi's last battle against Google : Artificial Intelligence
- emma3095
- 14 juin 2017
- 4 min de lecture
For the last 20 years, Lu Qi, the searching technology field genius, was repeatedly defeated by Google. First, when he was at Yahoo, and then with Microsoft's Bing search engine. Here's a portrait of one of China's most famous tech personality.
Lu Qi, Baidu's new President & COO
Four months ago, he returned to China to pursue another challenge: revive Baidu. People from the business believe it's a Don Quixote kind of move. Indeed, Baidu's search engine business was once the Chinese version of Google, but due to wrong decisions, scandals, and profit declines, its future became uncertain.
Lu Qi said he is confident that the situation will reverse and he will fight against Google again, this time in the AI battlefield. However he might be a bit less arrogant than he was few years ago. In 2009, when he joined Microsoft, he sent a challenge letter to Google announcing Bing would be Google’s strongest competitor.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lu Qi said that this is a perfect timing. He believes that the development of innovation in China is faster than in the United States.
For example, mobile internet is becoming more and more popular among Chinese users, and traditional industries such as banking and retailing are getting weaker and vulnerable. Lu Qi stated that, the fact that Baidu has a large number of technical employees has placed the company in a leading position in the artificial intelligence field.
Currently, Lu Qi is Baidu's co-founder and CEO, Li Yanhong's right arm. As the president and COO of Baidu Group, and vice-chairman of the board, 55-year-old Lu Qi made a few changes. He withdrew products that were not showing good results, merged three autopilot cars department into one, and reorganized the management staff.
On the day of the interview, Lu Qi was wearing a dark blue polo shirt, with light brown sandals and black socks, that made him look just like any programmers in Baidu’s headquarter. However, he is famous for being a workaholic. On that day he arrived at the office at 7 am, and left late at night. He once said that he had doubts about why people needed to sleep.
Microsoft insiders revealed that, Lu Qi was once the candidate for the CEO position when he was responsible for Office and Bing team in Microsoft. Then the title was attributed to his subordinate, Satya Nadella. Lu Qi left Microsoft in September last year on the grounds of health problems.
“Lu Qi's experience, technical expertise, and diligence make him a very popular man for almost all Chinese large technology companies.” told Li Kaifu, CEO of Innovation Workshop, former head of Google China and Microsoft China.
Lu Qi said that he has rejected offers from larger, and more powerful companies, because those companies only needed 70% of his capacities, whereas Baidu needs 100%. And he has indeed a lot of work, he needs to do his best. After Google's exit in 2010, Baidu became the leading force in the Chinese technology field, where it was part of ‘BAT’ tech giants trio with e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and the leader of game and information services, Tencent.
But the company tumbled. It missed the wave of mobile internet. Later it spent billions of dollars on the group, buying businesses, outgoing business and other services, and struggles started in these fields. Last year, after the infamous news that a college student searched for cancer treatment on Baidu search engine and then unfortunately died, the government has strengthened the supervision of medical advertising which is a huge source of income for Baidu’s search engine. In the first quarter of 2017, the operating profit of Baidu decreased by 9.3% compared with the previous year.
Now, Baidu's market value is less than a quarter than that of Tencent or Alibaba. Last year, Tencent and Alibaba's share prices went up by 71% and 51% respectively, while Baidu’s share price increased only by 8%.
Baidu has to reorganize its businesses, restore its reputation and its stock price. The overall moral also needs to be revived.
To this end, the first thing Lu Qi has to do is protect Baidu's search engine business. As its original internet users are turning to e-commerce and social media, the search business is weakened. According to a report from iResearch, in 2016, the advertising revenue of e-commerce business has exceeded that of the search business in China.
Lu Qi's solution is to make audio files, photos and videos searchable, and to expand the search business to cars and personal digital assistants (such as Amazon's Echo and other physical devices).
Then, he must ensure that Baidu's bet for the future is feasible.
Lu Qi invested heavily in the recruitment of artificial intelligence experts. In the first quarter of 2017, Baidu has raised its R & D funds to 2.8 billion yuan (about 4.12 billion US dollars), an increase of 35% compared to last year. These engineers will focus on search technology, voice recognition and autopilot technology.
With regard to automatic driving, Lu Qi believes that Baidu could directly compete with Google's parent company Alphabet and become a global leader.
Similarly to Google’s Android mobile phone operating system being open-sourced, last month, Lu Qi announced that Baidu will open its unmanned driving technology to other companies to speed up the research and development of automatic driving. He said that Baidu plans to massively produce fully autonomous autopilot cars in the beginning 2021.
This plan is known as the ‘Apollo program’. Lu Qi said that the government and car manufacturers are very positive about it. With the support from the government and data sharing with different partners, the development of automatic driving technology will be accelerated. “If the Apollo program is doing well, we will be able to catch up with or even surpass Google.” announced Lu Qi.
Google refused to comment on the issue.
Author: Li Yuan, he also conducted the interview for the WSJ
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