Those Things About the Internet

The first World Internet Conference has come and gone. China’s seven big shots each control resources in different fields and hold sway over their own directions. Burning cash, partnering, investing — whatever the outcome, it all drives China’s economic development and makes life easier and mutually beneficial for people. We who live at the bottom won’t know what things will look like ten years from now, and of course we don’t much care. The advance of high technology has already made life very lazy. What we’ll end up like, what we’ll worry about… it’s all unknown. Baidu has gone from a fly bouncing off the walls to focusing on the smart and big-data directions. Alibaba keeps evolving its own ecosystem, from Taobao and group buying to Alibaba Cloud. Tencent, forever the big brother of Chinese chat, with 500 million QQ and 450 million WeChat users. 360 takes the crown as number one in PC network security. Xiaomi pioneered the number one domestic phone brand, while also being Apple’s copycat. JD.com, once a very unremarkable shopping site, has now married into the Tencent family and looks poised to overtake Alibaba. Sohu, an inconspicuous player, is rising step by step. I’d say the era of the Internet setting out has arrived, and it’s also the opening of a real fight among the seven big shots — a huge storm is slowly brewing.