Baidu to Pursue Digital Interconnection With a Dozen Companies, Including Meituan
Beijing-based internet services and technology giant Baidu announced on Monday that it would jointly launch in-depth cooperation to promote interoperability between a dozen enterprises, including Meituan, Xiaohongshu, SF Express, Ctrip, Zhihu, TravelGo, Maoyan and 58.com. The plan aims to enhance interconnection across three key aspects – traffic, technology and the services ecology – starting from the upcoming Chinese Spring Festival.
As part of the arrangement, the above-mentioned enterprises will be able to release their own “mini-programs” within the Baidu app. An employee responsible for the app said that internet companies can thereby effectively enhance their user experience by satisfying various common demands, such as hotel reservations, train ticket bookings and movie tickets purchases, without the need to switch between apps.
On December 16, 2021, Baidu released its “Chaodao Plan” and announced cooperation with several leading smartphone manufacturers. The smartphones of these brands are connected to Baidu‘s smart mini program ecology, and allow 660,000 Baidu smart mini programs to run in browsers. At present, the number of daily users of smart mini programs in these mobile browsers has exceeded 10 million, and is expected to exceed 50 million, covering several hundred million users.
It is now an inevitable trend for internet enterprises to eliminate barriers and realize interconnection. In September 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) held a meeting and announced plans to rectify the behavior of shielding external chains in the internet industry. Later, in October, some media outlets reported that MIIT was considering asking Tencent and ByteDance to open search barriers.
Shen Dou, Executive Vice President of Baidu Group, said, “Interconnection is the next wave of dividends of China’s Internet, which will restart the vitality engine of China’s internet. Baidu firmly supports and embraces interconnection, and is willing to work with all parties to tear down the walled garden of the Internet, rebuild the open internet, create a better experience for users and promote the high-quality development of the industry.”
