The history of sogou’s disintegration： six businesses were closed in one year, and the 37 billion input method giants were no longer in sight.

As the afterglow of PC Internet era, sogou is gradually withdrawing from the stage of mobile Internet after being merged into Tencent for nearly a year.

Source: the creativity of the worm

Recently, sogou Game Center official website announced that due to the company’s business adjustment, sogou Game Center will officially stop its service and operation. The company will assist users to connect with the game official and communicate the transfer matters; If the customer has unused game coins and decides not to take them, he can contact the customer service of sogou Game Service Center for a refund before 12: 00 on November 16th, 2022.

So far, at least six businesses under sogou have been shut down one after another, including sogou Map, sogou Reading, sogou Lending, sogou search App, sogou and so on. A large number of former sogou people who merged with sogou into Tencent also gradually left in the rounds of personnel optimization.

A former sogou employee revealed to Time Finance that after sogou was integrated into various business groups of Tencent, all other small businesses would be gradually shut down except the core input method and browser. And he himself, with the adjustment of business, was forced to leave in early July.

From its inception in 2004, to its split into independent companies in 2010, and its successful listing in 2017, sogou has experienced brilliant achievements, and its input method business has occupied the highest share of the national market all the year round with its first-Mover advantage. The traffic conduction mode of "input method-browser-search" three-stage rocket proposed by Wang Xiaochuan was once a classic business model for the search industry to catch up with the situation.

However, in the era of mobile internet, when there are many obstacles in cross-application jumping, the information collection and integration ability that search engines are proud of fails, and it is gradually marginalized in a new wave. As the afterglow of PC Internet era, sogou is gradually withdrawing from the stage of mobile Internet after being merged into Tencent for nearly a year.

A "Death History" of sogou

In the early morning of September 24th, 2021, sogou announced the completion of the merger with Tencent, and sogou will become an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent, which will be delisted and continue to operate as a surviving company.

After the merger, according to the interface news report, most of the sogou business and public line teams will be merged into Tencent Watch. Tencent Platform and Content Business Group (PCG) released a new organizational structure adjustment after it entered sogou, and established "Information Platform and Service Line". QQ browser and Sogou browser have become the basic supporting platforms, and search engines such as artificial intelligence and input method have become the core business.

What happened at the same time was the immediate retreat of some marginal businesses. In September last year, sogou’s content open platform "sogou" announced that due to the company’s business adjustment, the platform would stop operating and serving on the 22nd. In October, sogou Lending App also issued a "Service Suspension Announcement".

Then it entered a short period of rest and integration. Until the first half of this year, Internet companies generally carried out actions to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and a larger-scale business contraction began.

In May this year, with a history of more than 20 years, sogou Map, the earliest Internet map service in China, was officially launched, and all related services were closed. Entering the original domain name will directly jump to Tencent Map; In July, sogou Reading also announced that it was suspended, and all users’ money was transferred to the novel balance of QQ browser. If they don’t agree or accept it, they will be regarded as giving up their rights and interests automatically.

Then, sogou’s core search business was also affected. Sogou’s last financial report before the merger showed that the search business accounted for 93% of the company’s overall revenue, and sogou’s excessive dependence on the search business was once considered as a major constraint to the company’s development.

However, at the beginning of August, sogou announced that the service of sogou search App will be officially stopped at 23: 59 on August 8, and the subsequent sogou search App will be unavailable, while the web version of sogou search can still be used. However, in the era of mobile internet, the frequency of web search engines is not as good as before.

Previously, sogou upgraded sogou search App to Bingo App. After renaming, it kept the original search engine and novel service of sogou search App, but removed the homepage information flow. Unfortunately, such measures failed to bring new vitality to sogou search. At present, Bingo App has been removed from the major app stores and withdrawn from the stage together with sogou search App.

In the second half of the year, this process will continue. A former employee of sogou told Time Finance that the graduation time of different departments is different. A large number of employees left by the end of June, and there will be another batch of personnel optimization actions by the end of September.

Being absorbed by Tencent is the best choice?

Sogou has also experienced glory.

At that time, with the order of Zhang Chaoyang, Wang Xiaochuan, who just graduated from Tsinghua University with a master’s degree, set up Sohu R&D Center. With the establishment of six people, 12 part-time college students of Tsinghua Olympic Games Training Team were invited to work on the development of search engines. Only 11 months later, in August 2004, Sohu’s own search engine "sogou" was officially launched.

However, sogou was not embraced by the market as expected. Baidu comes first, similar products, sogou is not very competitive, and it is always tepid. Until 2005, an accidental email made sogou realize the business opportunity of using search engine as input method.

A year later, sogou input method was officially published, and it was immediately praised by users for its accuracy in pinyin input and rich associative vocabulary. According to public information, with the first-Mover advantage, the user utilization rate of sogou input method reached 79.7% around 2009, far ahead of other input methods. This advantage was not surpassed by Baidu until these two years.

In the process of making input method products, Wang Xiaochuan realized that the Internet traffic portal is changing, and it is an inevitable choice for the search portal to move forward. At the same time, the input method also has natural shortcomings in the conversion of user traffic. Based on this, sogou decided to enter the browser market.

Since then, sogou’s "three-stage rocket" business model, which relies on the input method to drive the browser and the browser to drive the search, has gradually taken shape.

In 2010, Wang Xiaochuan invested in Ali, and sogou split up and developed independently. Two years later, Ali withdrew, and Tencent took a 36.5% stake in sogou for $448 million. After the transaction was completed, Tencent began to pour a lot of resources into sogou, directly merged QQ input method and SOSO into sogou, and exclusively launched WeChat search channel in sogou search to access WeChat WeChat official account.

After Tencent became a shareholder, Wang Xiaochuan and sogou ushered in a new highlight moment. In 2017, after 14 years of struggle, as the last unicorn out of the PC Internet era, sogou finally landed on the NYSE, with a market value of US$ 5.4 billion, or about RMB 37 billion.

But it is also sogou’s last glory. With the rapid development of mobile Internet, sogou began to decline gradually. According to the data of Oriental Choice, after sogou reached the highest net profit of $98.78 million in 2018, it began to shrink continuously. In 2020, there was even a huge loss of $100 million, and its market value also fell all the way, with the lowest point of only $1.134 billion.

Decline, loss, coupled with the major shareholder Sohu unwilling to fight. In the end, sogou seems to have no better choice than selling herself to Tencent. Only for Tencent, selective absorption is the best ending for sogou.