The battle in the search market is heating up.
On August 8, 2013, two U.S.-listed companies raced to introduce attractive compensation terms – Baidu upgraded its "Internet User Rights Protection Plan," while Qihoo 360 launched a commitment for its "Full Compensation Plan for Promotional Fraud" and disclosed some compensation cases.
Don't think this is just a war of words. A month after Qihoo's operation began, the results were rather grim: it handled 378 fraud claims, successfully compensated 202 cases, with a total compensation amount reaching over 1.21 million yuan, and the highest single compensation record being 260,000 yuan.
Yugangdong, Vice President of Qihoo 360 in charge of search, told the Economic Observer that to ensure the quality of search results, 360 abandoned a large block of advertising business that could be quickly monetized. Specifically, in order to compete with Baidu, it did not start this business from the beginning. For Qihoo 360, which is also a listed company, this means fighting for market share at the cost of revenue.
In fact, this is not only a competition at the expense of income, but also a major game-changer in the search industry in recent years. Now, the search battle between Baidu and Qihoo 360 has given people the greatest benefit: search service providers begin to "pay first" for fraudulent acts encountered by consumers through searches.
"Upgraded Competition"
"The Internet User Rights Protection Plan" was initially launched by Baidu on May 8 of this year, as part of Baidu's "Sunshine Action." By May, Baidu claimed that the "Sunshine Action" had cracked down on 60 million fake web pages, involving over 5.05 million fake sites. And Baidu's "Internet User Rights Protection Plan" also had a compensation "cap" – 5,000 yuan.
At that time, 360 also launched a corresponding fraud compensation plan.
On August 8, Baidu and 360 almost simultaneously announced new content for their full compensation plans.
Baidu stated that it would comprehensively upgrade the "Internet User Rights Protection Plan": if internet users suffer losses due to counterfeit or phishing fraud websites when using Baidu search, upon providing relevant evidence, Baidu will provide "full" prior protection without any cap, eliminating the 5,000 yuan prior protection limit, and implementing "full prior protection" for internet users who encounter counterfeit or phishing fraud websites and suffer losses. Baidu will also expand the protection scope from commercial promotion results to all search results, meaning that regardless of whether users use promotional results or natural results, which browser they use, or whether they have installed security products, as long as they are logged in and can provide relevant evidence, once verified, all economic losses suffered by internet users will be fully compensated by Baidu.
360 then revealed the results of its "Full Compensation Plan" and announced that for any fraud encountered on all 360 products – including PC-end 360 Security Guard, mobile-end 360 Mobile Security Guard, mobile-end 360 Mobile Assistant, browsers, etc., across all 360 product lines – as long as evidence is submitted within 30 days, 360 will provide full compensation.
Which search engine should you trust more? This has now become a question worth pondering.