2019: Technology is king

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In 2019, the development of China's Internet industry reached a major turning point.

On the one hand, based on the saturation of the number of Chinese netizens, the era of so-called traffic dividends has completely ended, the incremental market has turned into a stock market, and the survival and development of enterprises have also encountered many difficulties. On the other hand, with the widespread use of mobile Internet, the Internet is integrating from the online world to multiple levels of social development to an unprecedented degree, and has promoted the further development of technologies such as 5G, big data, and artificial intelligence. At such a major turning point, Chinese Internet companies, represented by BAT, are also actively seeking change in their own different ways.

But among the differences, there are some rare commonalities: a group of representative Chinese Internet companies, including BAT, have raised the banner of technology in their structural adjustments and personnel changes.

On the fourth day of 2019, Tencent Technology Committee was established.

In fact, the establishment of Tencent's Technology Committee is part of the Internet giant's "930 Reform" in 2018. At that time, Tencent said that the original intention of establishing the Technology Committee was to strengthen basic research and development through internal distributed open source collaboration, build a technical middle platform with Tencent characteristics, and make technology the driving force and support for the company's business development and product innovation; in addition, it can also open internal open source results to the industry - but it was not until 100 days later that the Tencent Technology Committee was officially announced to the public.

In terms of personnel, the Tencent Technology Committee is led by Lu Shan, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of the Technology Engineering Group (TEG), and Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of the Cloud and Smart Industry Group (CSIG). The technical leaders of several major business groups are included in the decision-making circle of the Technology Committee. It has two main goals: one is to promote internal open source in a "top-down" manner, reduce code duplication, and promote project efficiency; the other is to coordinate the deep integration of internal R&D work in the cloud and accelerate the integration of cloud configuration.

Simply put, it is walking on two legs: "open source collaboration" and "self-research and cloud computing".

Open source collaboration is obviously a major move made by Tencent to overcome the drawbacks of each business department being independent and operating independently in technology. As a result, it will make it easier to integrate resources, further improve R&D efficiency and code quality, optimize operating costs, and of course promote the development of Tencent's internal code culture.

Judging from the specific achievements, Tencent has reaped great rewards in "open source collaboration" - as of the first anniversary of the 930 transformation, Tencent has carried out 8,000 open source projects and 50 collaborative projects in internal open source collaboration, among which representative projects include Tencent CI, TianQiong (Sky Dome), video processing, etc.; in terms of external open source, as of September 2019, Tencent has released 84 open source projects on Github, with a total of more than 240,000 Stars.

Compared with "open source collaboration", "self-developed cloud" is actually also for improving efficiency, but its method is to bring technology to the cloud. From the specific operation point of view, it is to migrate Tencent's self-developed business to the cloud data center, use cloud services, connect the basic services of the self-developed data center through dedicated lines, and realize multi-location disaster recovery of the self-developed data center and the cloud data center; from the method point of view, there are three ways: to go to the cloud after transformation, to go to the cloud while transforming, and to go to the cloud first and then transform.

Regarding Tencent's "self-developed cloud", there is a typical case:

In 2017, all Tencent QQ users were still on the private cloud; by the end of 2018, 15% of QQ users had been moved from the South China region to the Guangzhou Cloud. In June 2019, 30% of QQ users were already on the cloud. According to Tencent's plan, by the end of 2019, QQ will achieve the migration of all users in the three major regions of South China, East China and North China to the cloud, and realize the complete QQ public cloud service.

Overall, Tencent Technology Committee is more like a central organization for technical coordination and mediation rather than a specialized organization for technical research and technical force contribution.

But for an Internet giant like Tencent, the significance of this committee cannot be underestimated, especially under Tencent's new strategy of "taking root in consumer Internet and embracing industrial Internet". The leadership of Lu Shan and Tang Daosheng each has its own uses. The former is responsible for the evolution and upgrading of Tencent's existing technical capabilities, while the latter can help Tencent concentrate its internal technical strength to develop To B business.

Compared with Tencent, Xiaomi’s positioning of its own technology committee is quite similar, but there are also differences.

Xiaomi established the Technology Committee on February 26, 2019. At that time, Xiaomi was undergoing a new round of structural adjustments. Cui Baoqiu, who previously served as Xiaomi's chief architect and vice president of Xiaomi's artificial intelligence and cloud platform, was appointed as vice president of Xiaomi Group and chairman of the Group Technology Committee.

In this regard, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi must continue to strengthen its technology-based business, because technology is related to the survival of Xiaomi and is the most important driving force and engine for Xiaomi's sustainable development; and Cui Baoqiu's mission is to further strengthen the technology culture and engineering culture, focus on improving Xiaomi's technology direction decisions, increase efforts in the recruitment of technical talents, and explore future technology trends.

Judging from this appointment and the specific personnel appointments in April, Xiaomi's Technology Committee will not only assume the role of technical research, direction grasp and technical cooperation, but will also be responsible for Xiaomi's overall technical culture, technical roles and technical talent training.

Regarding the role changes of Xiaomi's technical committee, Cui Baoqiu once said in an interview with Leifeng.com at CCF-GAIR 2019:

I was previously in charge of Xiaomi's ABC (AI, Big Data and Cloud), and now I am in charge of all technologies at the group level, including hardware, software and Internet services, as well as design. The core things (such as technology routes, technological evolution, technological reserves, etc.) have not changed. The difference is that before it was more of a horizontal push, but now it is pushed from top to bottom, which makes it easier to push forward.

Of course, under the Xiaomi Group Technology Committee, Cui Baoqiu also presides over Xiaomi's Design Committee and Privacy Committee. In addition, Cui Baoqiu is also responsible for Xiaomi's external technical cooperation (such as cooperation with Wuhan University and Harbin Institute of Technology) and the creation of engineering culture. Of course, this is what Cui Baoqiu has been doing in his previous tenure. In an interview with Leifeng.com, he said that he has been promoting an engineering culture similar to that of Silicon Valley startups within Xiaomi, including advocating open source.

On November 19, 2019, at the Xiaomi Developer Conference, Cui Baoqiu, as the Chairman of the Xiaomi Group Technology Committee, gave a speech titled "Join Hands to Explore the Future of Technology", and Xiaomi's core technologies were unveiled for the first time. At the conference, Cui Baoqiu introduced many of Xiaomi's core technologies, including smartphones, Auto ML, Xiaomi's mobile deep learning framework MACE, NLP, Pegasus, and Xiao Ai 3.0, and summarized the three major qualitative change factors from IoT to AIoT, which can be said to be a "Xiaomi Technology Review".

It is worth mentioning that Xiaomi’s efforts in technology have received some important recognition. For example, the Ministry of Science and Technology awarded Xiaomi the “National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform for Smart Home”. With the support of open source, Xiaomi also successfully attracted the technology guru Daniel Povey to join.

As one of the BAT companies, Baidu has been left far behind by the other two in terms of market value, but in terms of technology, Baidu still has a position that cannot be underestimated. Looking at Baidu's many developments in 2019, the most eye-catching one is the appointment of its third CTO, who is the technical expert Wang Haifeng.

Wang Haifeng has an impressive academic resume. He is the first Chinese to serve as the president of ACL, the most influential international academic organization in the field of natural language processing, and the only ACL fellow from mainland China. He has won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, is the only winner of the first Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Outstanding Contribution Award, and enjoys the special government allowance of the State Council.

It is worth mentioning that Wang Haifeng was once nominated as a candidate for academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

In terms of career, Wang Haifeng joined Baidu in January 2010 and has been working at Baidu for nearly 10 years. He has served as senior scientist, chief scientist of basic technology, vice president, and senior vice president. He has successively established the Natural Language Processing Department, Internet Data R&D Department, Recommendation Engine and Personalization Department, Multimedia Department, Image Search Department, Speech Technology Department, etc. for Baidu. He assisted in the establishment of Baidu Deep Learning Institute IDL and Baidu AIG. Later, at the end of 2018, he served as the general manager of the AI ​​Technology Platform System (AIG) and the Basic Technology System (TG).

It can be said that Wang Haifeng's technical strength and career at Baidu are fully up to the extremely high requirements of Baidu's CTO for technology itself, especially in the AI ​​era, this advantage is even more obvious. However, Wang Haifeng has another advantage as Baidu's CTO: he has been working at Baidu for nearly ten years. During his growth, he has not only contributed to Baidu's technological progress, but also has a deep understanding of Baidu's technology development and product development system, and has accumulated a lot of experience in technology management.

From almost all angles, Wang Haifeng is the best choice to become Baidu's CTO.

According to Robin Li, Baidu re-established the role of CTO in order to further build and consolidate the company's core technological advantages, unswervingly promote product and user experience improvements, release technological dividends, and promote industrial intelligent transformation. Wang Haifeng is responsible for not only improving Baidu's core technological competitiveness, but also transforming technology into applications, and training team talents and building echelons.

It is worth noting that a few months after Wang Haifeng took office as Baidu's CTO, Robin Li announced a further upgrade of the "Cloud + AI" strategy, with Baidu Intelligent Cloud and CTO efficiently integrated. Yin Shiming, Baidu Vice President and General Manager of Baidu Intelligent Cloud, led ACG (Intelligent Cloud Business Group) to report to Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng. Robin Li said that this organizational structure upgrade will help accelerate the input of underlying technical capabilities accumulated during the implementation of the TG middle platform strategy to the cloud, and will also help accelerate the commercialization of AIG's AI capabilities, allowing technology to support business on the cloud platform more directly and efficiently.

It can be seen that in the context of artificial intelligence moving towards application, Baidu hopes to promote the use of underlying technologies to empower cloud computing business, and thereby promote cloud computing to empower AI towards implementation - and in this appointment, Wang Haifeng, as CTO, will have even greater responsibilities. He not only leads Baidu's overall technological progress, but also focuses on the commercialization strategy of Baidu's AI and other technical capabilities.

It can be said that from a business perspective, Wang Haifeng has become the second most important person in Baidu after Robin Li, which fully demonstrates Baidu's extreme emphasis on technology.

On November 19, 2019, at the JDD (JD Global Technology Explorer Conference), JD announced its overall strategy of transformation to technology. Its three major sub-group businesses, JD Retail, JD Digital Technology, and JD Logistics, made their first appearance. At the same time, JD clearly explained its group strategic positioning as a "retail-based technology and service company."

Regarding this positioning, Leifeng.com believes that JD.com has made great achievements in technology investment, talent introduction, technological progress and attention. However, for JD.com, which has a super complex business chain and huge traffic, what it still lacks is the top-level technical architecture design, that is, the role of CTO is vacant - however, JD.com soon responded and established the role of the helmsman of the entire JD.com technology system.

However, the actual title of this role is no longer JD CTO, but Chairman of JD Group Technology Committee, which is held by Zhou Bowen.

As the chairman of JD.com's Technology Committee, Zhou Bowen is first and foremost a technical expert. Before joining JD.com, Zhou Bowen served as the dean of IBM Research's Artificial Intelligence Foundations (AI Foundations), chief scientist of IBM Watson Group, and IBM's distinguished engineer. At the same time, Zhou Bowen has won multiple IBM technology awards, including the IBM Outstanding Technology Leadership Achievement Award and IBM's highest award, "Best of IBM". On the academic level, Zhou Bowen's resume is also quite eye-catching - it is worth mentioning that on November 27, 2019, Zhou Bowen was also selected for the IEEE 2020 new fellow list.

On September 29, 2017, Zhou Bowen joined JD.com as Vice President of JD.com Group, mainly responsible for AI research and platform-related businesses, with a clear focus on the innovation of AI algorithms, and empowering related modules based on application scenarios and results; he reports directly to JD.com CEO Liu Qiangdong.

In the following two years, Zhou Bowen made a lot of contributions to the development of JD.com's AI technology foundation.

For example, under Zhou Bowen's leadership, JD.com built NeuHub, an open artificial intelligence platform. Currently, NeuHub has combined internal and external ecological forces and worked with ecological partners to develop more than 200 products and applications. Among them, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced that it would build a national new generation of artificial intelligence open innovation platform for intelligent supply chain based on JD.com, which is based on NeuHub, an open artificial intelligence platform of JD.com. In terms of talent, Zhou Bowen recruited dozens of scientists such as He Xiaodong and Mei Tao for JD.com, and formed an artificial intelligence team of about 400 people.

But before appointing Zhou Bowen as the chairman of the technical committee, JD Group had actually done some preparatory work. On December 6, JD Group announced the establishment of the JD Cloud and AI Division, which integrated the structure and responsibilities of the original JD Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT divisions. Zhou Bowen was in charge, and Shen Yuanqing, the original president of the JD Cloud Division, was announced to be out - in this way, Zhou Bowen fully mastered JD's basic technical departments such as AI, cloud and IoT.

According to JD, Zhou Bowen will lead the JD Cloud, AI, and IoT teams to focus on strategy, technology, products, innovation, scenario-based top-level design, and commercial implementation after he assumes the position of head of JD Cloud and AI Division, integrating JD's cutting-edge technology with the real economy, and striving to achieve the goal of academic advancement and technology commercialization. It can be seen that Zhou Bowen is not only responsible for the progress and academic promotion of JD's underlying technology, but also for promoting the application and commercialization of technology.

However, just four days after Zhou Bowen was appointed as the head of JD Cloud and AI Division, he was appointed as the head of JD Group Technology Committee in a new round of structural adjustments. According to official statements, JD Group Technology Committee will be committed to building a technology brand, coordinating the creation of a technology culture, cultivating a team of technical talents, promoting the implementation of JD's technology transformation and technology service strategy, and at the same time, conducting external technology cooperation and exchanges, and building external technology influence.

As a result, JD.com finally had a nominal and actual helmsman at the overall technical level, laying a good foundation for JD.com's technological transformation strategy.

Among Chinese Internet companies, Alibaba's strategic layout and talent recruitment capabilities at the technical level can be said to be outstanding and unique. Its role as a technical center and helmsman was established many years ago and has been strengthened over time. In 2019, Alibaba not only achieved huge gains and honors at the technical level, but also made further structural adjustments and upgrades.

On November 22, 2019, Wang Jian from Alibaba (China) Co., Ltd. appeared on the list of elected academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2019. This was the first time that such an academician had been selected from a certain unit of the two academies, and Wang Jian also became the first academician from a private enterprise in China.

For a long time, Wang Jian has been the technical helmsman of Alibaba. He joined Alibaba Group as chief architect in 2008 and reported directly to Jack Ma. In order to solve the bottleneck problem of large computing power, he led the Alibaba technical team to build a cloud computing system from scratch. This system was named Fei Tian, ​​which is also the only self-developed cloud operating system in China. It also laid the foundation for today's Alibaba Cloud.

Wang Jian was appointed CTO of Alibaba Group in August 2012; in June 2015, Wang Jian was appointed Chairman of Alibaba Technology Committee - and in November 2019, Wang Jian was formally elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. This is of course first and foremost a glory for Wang Jian himself, but it can also be said to be a technological glory for Alibaba.

However, while Wang Jian achieved success, Alibaba's evolution in technical architecture did not stop.

On December 19, 2019, Alibaba and its closely related Ant Financial simultaneously issued internal letters announcing a new round of structural adjustments and personnel changes; among them, an important focus of this round of structural adjustments is the transformation of the technology system.

For example, Zhang Jianfeng, in addition to his previous roles as the dean of DAMO Academy and the head of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Business Group, was given the role of chairman of Alibaba's Technology Committee, leading Alibaba's future overall technology strategy, the construction of DAMO Academy, and working to further breakthrough Alibaba Cloud's intelligent business. While Zhang Jianfeng continued to rise from CTO to chairman of the Technology Committee, he also left the role of Alibaba's CTO to Cheng Li, the former CTO of Ant Financial.

Leifeng.com learned that Cheng Li joined Alipay in 2005 and is one of the founders of Alipay's technology platform. He presided over the planning of Alipay's various generations of technology architecture and the construction of the basic technology platform, and designed and implemented a series of key business systems for Alipay. He is praised by Alipay employees as a "god-like existence"; he has served as the CTO of Ant Financial for a long time. In the Ant Financial structural adjustment in December 2016, Cheng Li also served as the CTO of Ant Financial's International Business Group, and later served as the COO of Ant Financial's International Business Group.

Obviously, Zhang Jianfeng's position as Alibaba's technical leader has been further consolidated, which also highlights the overall technical support position of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Business Group in Alibaba Group. In comparison, Wang Jian, who previously served as the chairman of Alibaba's Technology Committee, already feels like he has accomplished his mission and is ready to retire.

Of course, given the huge size of Alibaba's technology system, Zhang Jianfeng cannot handle it all by himself; to some extent, Cheng Li was transferred from Ant Financial to Alibaba as CTO and vice chairman of Alibaba's Technology Committee in order to assist Zhang Jianfeng - but it should be noted here that Cheng Li's direct reporting object is also Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong, not Zhang Jianfeng.

In addition, in Ant Financial, since Cheng Li has a new role in Alibaba, Hu Xi will take over the position of CTO of Ant Financial. Leifeng.com learned that before the promotion, Hu Xi served as Ant Financial's deputy CTO, vice president and chief architect, and was also a partner of Alibaba. In this adjustment, Hu Xi also successfully became a regular employee.

It can be seen that in this structural adjustment, Alibaba has fully utilized its advantages in technical talent and has placed greater emphasis on technology in its strategy. Ant Financial is essentially part of the Alibaba ecosystem, so this adjustment is actually an upgrade of the entire Alibaba ecosystem at the technical level.

In fact, with the actual role of Alibaba's Technology Committee shifting from Wang Jian to Zhang Jianfeng, Alibaba's entire technology system has also completed intergenerational transmission.

Even though the mobile Internet era has passed, BAT remains the weather vane of China's Internet industry.

In 2018, BAT all took a step towards the B-end in their respective structural adjustments, which became a footnote to the in-depth expansion of the development of the entire Chinese Internet industry to the industrial level.

In 2019, BAT once again achieved further progress in the technical architecture, which was rare and consistent. Although their focus and forms may be different, they all reflect that technology itself has been given a higher position in their own development. Moreover, around BAT, there are also China's most representative Internet companies such as JD.com and Xiaomi, which have also established the unique position of technology in their own corporate development.

If we look at 2019 from a historical perspective, this year will surely be regarded as a landmark year in the history of the development of China's Internet industry. After more than 20 years of wild growth and turbulence, this industry has finally identified the core support for its long-term development - technology, and has begun to adjust in the process of positioning, sink in the process of adjustment, and accumulate strength in the process of sinking. This strength is also the key for Chinese Internet companies to face future internal and external challenges.

Therefore, standing at the upcoming time window of 2020, we sincerely wish the Chinese Internet industry all the best, and are also ready to witness everything.