Text |Brother Cai.
EdRao.
The relationship between major Internet companies is constantly "breaking the ice" and heating up. On February 20, many netizens posted on social platforms that when shopping, they found that they could choose WeChat payment to pay for orders, which surprised many people, and the incident was also on the hot search of the day. Subsequently, **The official customer service replied that it is currently only open to some users, and it only supports the selection of some products when purchasing, and it will be "gradually opened and all covered", and "this time will not be very long". The world of the internet is changing too fast. In the past many years, there has been fierce competition between the two giants, Ali and Tencent, and the relationship between Alipay and WeChat Pay is even more full of gunsmoke and water and fire. Ten years ago, the ** link could not be opened in WeChat, and for many years after that, the two sides "blocked" each other and developed separately. Until the end of 2023, ** and WeChat began to reach in-depth cooperation in multiple traffic channels. In fact,The Internet giants that have shifted from competition to cooperation are far more than Alibaba and Tencent. Not long ago, Douyin and Tencent ushered in the "reconciliation of the century", and the two sides cooperated in the field of games, and Tencent's ace games "Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite" and "League of Legends" were fully opened to Douyin live broadcast in January this year. In November 2023, Hema Fresh announced that it would settle in JD.com and participate in the official activities of JD.com's Double 11; At the end of 2023, Xiaohongshu announced the establishment of the "Grass Planting Data Alliance" to connect grass planting data with transaction data from other platforms, and has now joined JD.com, Vipshop, Dewu, Qunar, Meituan and other platforms. Almost at the same time, there are still two news circulating in the industry, one is that Tencent may take over the game business "cut" by Byte; Second, Byte intends to acquire Alibaba's Ele.me business. Although both rumors were later denied by the companies involved, they reflect a common truth:The integration between large manufacturers has become the trend of the times and will be further deepened. Behind the cooperation, there are not only the restrictions of the Internet "anti-monopoly" policy, but also the direction of the "interconnection" of the competent authorities, and the influence of the development trend of the Internet industry. After the early years of staking and rapid development, major Internet companies are now bidding farewell to rapid growth, and reducing costs and increasing efficiency have become the main line of common development of large manufacturers. The old model of "doing it behind closed doors" and "doing miracles in a big way" no longer works, and openness and cooperation are the wiser and more effective moves. Ali and Tencent: "Blocking" began to "break the ice" after 8 yearsAs the two camps in BAT, Ali and Tencent are the earliest Internet giants, competing with each other, and the smell of gunpowder is very strong. The extreme pull between the two sides can be traced back to 2013, when the ** link could not be opened in WeChat, and could only be "bypassed" by "Tao password" and "copy link". This mutual "blocking" situation lasted for 8 years, until July 2021, when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched a six-month special rectification action for the Internet industry, and blocking ** links became one of the key rectification issues this time, and Alibaba and Tencent began to turn to cooperation since then. At first, Alibaba's Ele.me, Youku, Damai, Koala Overseas Shopping and other applications were connected to WeChat Pay. If the user jumps to ** shopping through the Moments advertisement, he can pay by scanning the code through WeChat. After that, WeChat updated the management method of external links, **external links can be opened in WeChat from now on, but they still can't jump directly to**app. In March 2022, the internal test of WeChat payment will be opened again, and some users can choose two ways to pay: "WeChat scan code payment" and "go to WeChat to find a friend to help me pay" when paying. At that time, although the cooperation had begun, progress was slow, and both sides looked a little awkward. It wasn't until later that users could access external ** links in the WeChat one-to-one chat scene, and later extended to the group chat scene. The deeper integration is that in 2023, Tencent Advertising and Alimama will achieve bilateral joint subsidies for the first time, and users can finally jump straight to the **APP when they click on the ads of Moments. In the 8 years that Ali and Tencent have "blocked" each other, Alipay and WeChat Pay have also fought hard in order to compete for users. For many years before 2014, Alipay was a dominant company in the domestic online payment field and had almost no rivals, but on Chinese New Year's Eve 2014, WeChat launched WeChat red packets sponsored the Spring Festival Gala that year, triggering a national red packet carnival. 
Through this red envelope campaign, WeChat Pay grabbed Alipay's original market share, and thus changed the original pattern of online payment, and even Ma Yun said that "it was like being attacked at Pearl Harbor." WeChat, which tasted the sweetness, cooperated with the Spring Festival Gala again in the second year and launched a new way to play red envelopes "Shake It", which won a big victory again. Before the Spring Festival Gala that year, WeChat had less than 8 million WeChat payment users, but by May 2015, the number of WeChat change users had reached 300 million, and WeChat only took two years to reach the volume of Alipay for 8 years. Due to the super social attributes of WeChat and the convenience of WeChat Pay, more and more users choose WeChat Pay instead of Alipay.
Many users said that they would only use Alipay when shopping on Tmall. Alipay has also become a payment tool with 1 billion users but few active users, and it is difficult to retain users. Although Alipay has launched the "Jiwufu" campaign during the Spring Festival for nine consecutive years, and has also tried to retain users by enhancing social attributes, improving user stickiness and frequency of use, it is unable to shake the strong position of WeChat Pay, and the pattern of online payment is also difficult to break. In the past, the mutual binding of Alipay and **Tmall was of great significance to both parties, and it also constituted Ali's moat to a certain extent. Nowadays, Alipay is losing users, and Tmall has also bid farewell to high growth, and this exclusive binding between the two sides has lost its past advantages. In this case,**Increase the integration with WeChat Pay, whether for merchants or users, but it is an attraction. For users, there is an additional payment option; For merchants, it is possible to get a new round of traffic and users from the cooperation with WeChat. The cooperation will also bring significant growth in user traffic, especially in the past two years when e-commerce has entered a comprehensive low-price competition, and the cooperation between the two sides is more significant. WeChat can bring more users to the sinking market, and Tencent can also leverage more heavyweight brand partners in cooperation with Alibaba. Byte and Tencent: "fierce battle" to "handshake peace".Like the relationship between Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance and Tencent have also gone through a process from hostility and "shielding" to cooperation. As a latecomer among the Internet giants, ByteDance has been a scrappy and aggressive spoiler from the beginning, and after the emergence of Toutiao and Douyin, it launched an all-round offensive against the old giant Tencent, and the contradictions between the two sides were once white-hot. The symbol of the intensification of the conflict between the two sides is that the two founders "choked" in the circle of friends. The time is May 2018, and Zhang Yiming, the founder of Bytes, celebrated the ** volume of Douyin TikTok in the circle of friends, and left a message in the comment area: "WeChat's excuse**, Weishi's plagiarism and handling, can't stop the pace of Douyin." Ma Huateng replied directly in the comment area: "It can be understood as slander." After that, Zhang Yiming replied to Ma Huateng, to the effect that he was just complaining, and he would send information to Ma Huateng separately about the plagiarism and handling of Microvision. Since many Internet bigwigs could see this circle of friends, the contradictions between the two sides also spread and became a hot topic at that time. The reason for the two founders to choke each other was the strong competition between the two large factories at that time, and the ruthless competition methods. For example, in March 2018, the small ** link of Douyin and Volcano may only be visible to himself when he shares it to the circle of friends, and then he can only be visible when he shares it to QQ space; In April of the same year, watermelon, Douyin, and volcano shared links to WeChat and QQ could not**. Also in 2018, Douyin's personal page** was also blocked by the circle of friends. At that time, blocking external links was a common means of competition between major Internet companies, and it almost became an industry consensus. At the same time, there are also lawsuits between Byte and Tencent. According to statistics, there were more than 400 judicial disputes between the two sides in 2018. In 2016, Tencent sued Byte to the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court on suspicion of infringing the copyright of Honor of Kings, and three years later, the court ruled that the company should stop broadcasting the Honor of Kings game from January 31, 2019. After the two sides "fell out", they began to lay out in the game field. Byte invested heavily in game projects, and developed from the first-class model to self-development, and in 2019, it officially launched the game brand Chaoxi Lightyear, which has the intention of competing with Tencent Games. Tencent also began to lay out its own live broadcast platform, first increasing its stake in Huya to become its largest shareholder, and vigorously promoting the merger of Huya and Douyu, and at the same time supporting Douyin's short rival Kuaishou to compete with Douyin's game live broadcast business. According to the plan at that time, Byte will have its own developed games, which can be on its own live broadcast platform Douyin**; Tencent also has its own live broadcast platform, which can broadcast its own games, and the two sides draw the ground as a prison and do not disturb each other. But the subsequent developments did not go as expected. At the end of November 2023, Byte announced that it would cut its game development business, and part of Lightyear's business was disbanded in situ. In April 2020, Tencent increased its stake in Huya to become its largest shareholder, and half a year later, Huya and Douyu signed a merger agreement, but the merger was eventually investigated by antitrust and stopped. After that, Huya fell into losses, the scale of users stopped growing, and Dong Rongjie, the founder and CEO of Huya, will resign in 2023; Douyu is no longer in the limelight, and the founder Chen Shaojie was arrested in the second half of 2023 on suspicion of opening a casino. Tencent, which was in dire need of a live streaming platform, had to find another way out and cooperate with Douyin. First of all, Tencent's ace game "Honor of Kings" was fully opened on Douyin Live on January 21 this year, and then two other well-known games "Peace Elite" and "League of Legends" were also fully opened to Douyin Live. 
Picture: Glory of Kings Douyin account** Douyin Screenshot of earpiece techThe two sides have moved from confrontation, Douyin can help the publicity and promotion of Tencent Games, and Tencent Games can enrich Douyin's game content ecology, and a win-win situation can be achieved. Not long ago, it was reported that Tencent may take over the game business "cut" by Byte, and Byte is also negotiating with Ali about the acquisition of Ele.me. The source also revealed that the reason why these two businesses have not reached results so far is because the two sides have not negotiated. However, the companies concerned have denied the above rumors, but at least it shows that the integration between large manufacturers has become the trend of the times and will be further deepened in the future. The Internet giants have made in-depth adjustments, "if you can't beat it, you can join".Other major Internet companies are also strengthening cooperation with each other. In November 2023, Hema Xiansheng announced that it would settle in JD.com and participate in the official activities of JD.com's Double 11.
At the end of 2023, Xiaohongshu announced the establishment of the "Grass Planting Data Alliance" to connect Xiaohongshu's grass planting data with the transaction data of other platforms, and has now joined JD.com, Vipshop, Dewu, Qunar, Meituan and other platforms. On the one hand, the restrictions of the Internet "anti-monopoly" policy, the competent authorities are also advocating "interconnection" between large manufacturers. On the other hand, yesAfter experiencing rapid development, the Internet giants are now bidding farewell to rapid growth and entering the stock era as a whole, and reducing costs and increasing efficiency have become the main line of current development. In the past two years, the Internet has entered a period of deep adjustment, and in the past 2023, some large factories have experienced a difficult moment of slowing down in performance growth and forced transformation. 
For example, in recent years, Ali has encountered many pressures, almost spending time in deep changes one after another, and moving forward in one personnel change after another. Especially in 2023, Ali will not only have to face Pinduoduo, a fast-rising opponent, but also face the impact of live e-commerce on the short ** platform, coupled with the sweep of low prices, the original advantage of **Tmall, a subsidiary of Fatal Ali, is weakening. Ali's market capitalization is even more thrilling, Ali once hit a peak of $857.7 billion in market capitalization, but three years later, the market value has fallen below $200 billion. Pinduoduo's market value once surpassed Alibaba, which made Ali feel in crisis. To this end, Alibaba will carry out a deep change in 2023, and Alibaba Group will be split into a "1+6+N" structure. After that, personnel adjustments were made, Daniel Zhang's position as chairman of the group board was handed over to Tsai Chongxin, the CEO position was taken over by Wu Yongming, and the CEO of Taotian Group, Alibaba's core e-commerce business, was also replaced at the end of the year. On the evening of February 7, Ali disclosed its results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, and Alibaba's revenue in the previous quarter was 2603500 million yuan increased by 5% year-on-year, but operating profit decreased by 36% year-on-year to 225100 million yuan, net profit fell sharply by 77% year-on-year, only 107200 million yuan. Net profit plummeted, and share buybacks failed to boost the stock price, and now Ali needs good news too much. The theme of Ali's change is return, but for the huge Ali, the change is not easy, and the effect will still take time. Tencent also experienced a difficult two-year adjustment period in 2021 and 2022, and by 2023, revenue and profit will return to double-digit growth. In the first three quarters of 2023, Tencent's revenue increased by 10% year-on-year, and its net profit under non-IFRS increased by 39% year-on-year. However, Tencent is also under pressure, with foreign media reports that Byte's revenue in the second quarter of 2023 will reach $29 billion, and its revenue in the first half of the year will be about $54 billion, exceeding Tencent's revenue of $41.3 billion in the first half of the year. Ma Huateng also commented on Tencent's ace business game in almost sharp language at the year-end meeting, calling it "lying on the credit book" and "it seems to have achieved nothing", and Ma Huateng also said, "We have also launched new products, but they are not as good as we imagined." Although Byte still achieves high business growth in 2023, it has also been shrinking its business in the past two years, giving up game self-development at the end of 2023. While abandoning a number of businesses, Byte has focused on two tracks, local life and overseas business, in addition to live broadcast e-commerce, but at present, the progress of local life is unfavorable, and overseas business expansion is also full of resistance. At the end of 2023, Liang Rubo mentioned the sense of crisis many times. He believes that Byte's current business has a very large inertia, and even if the team does not work extraordinarily, the company can rely on inertia coasting for a long time, but this is dangerous. In Liang Rubo's view, the biggest sense of crisis is the fear that the organization is becoming mediocre and unable to make new breakthroughs. JD.com has also fallen into the dilemma of quality and low price in recent years, and will fully launch a low-price strategy in 2023, but a year has passed, and the results of the low-price strategy are not obvious, and the impact on JD.com to reverse the situation is limited. The most important thing is that Jingdong is mainly self-operated, which is different from Pinduoduo and Taotian, which makes it more difficult to implement its low-price strategy, and it is difficult for low-price to be implemented in a large area. In the third quarter of 2023, the growth rate of many data of JD.com's performance is not as fast as Pinduoduo, nor is it inferior to Alibaba, and it is far behind Pinduoduo and Ali in terms of market capitalization. Meituan's 2023 is also on thin ice, with its new business performing poorly, not only slowing down, but also losing money after burning a lot of money, and Meituan's core food delivery business is also weak. At the third quarter report at the end of November 2023, Meituan CFO Chen Shaohui predicted that "the year-on-year growth of takeaway revenue in the fourth quarter will be slightly lower than that in the third quarter", and the operating profit of the in-store and hospitality business in the third quarter decreased year-on-year, offsetting the "steady growth" of the profit of the catering takeaway business. In the field of local life, Meituan is also facing the impact of Douyin's in-store business, and the two sides have launched fierce competition in 2023. Meituan had previously estimated that the number of daily orders for takeaway would reach 100 million in 2025, and now this expectation has been adjusted to 2027. Meituan's share price plummeted, and on January 17, Meituan's Hong Kong stock closed at 68HK$75 shares, falling below the issue price of HK$69 shares listed in 2018 for the first time, and in the following week, Meituan's share price almost wandered around the breaking line, and until February 21, the stock price did not exceed HK$80. It is no longer possible for the big Internet companies to work as fast as in the past, and the development model of "doing it yourself behind closed doors" and "vigorously producing miracles" in the past is no longer applicable, and openness and cooperation are the wise moves. "If you can't beat it, join in" is the simplest and most effective way. List of high-quality authors (Some of the pictures come from the Internet, invaded and deleted.) ） end—