Who is offended by the paid input method of Baidu?

Recently, Baidu Input Method released version 12.2.0, and its version introduction mentioned that "Baidu Input Method VIP is online". This news has sparked discussions among many netizens. If you are a user, and Baidu Input Method launches a paid model, will you pay for it?

"The input method has to be paid, has Baidu gone crazy because of poverty?" Some netizens commented on the topic of "Baidu Input Method Launches Paid VIP".

Since Sogou Input Method was launched in 2006, various input method products in China have been free to use. The sudden "charging" of Baidu Input Method has caused a lot of netizens to go crazy. First, why does Baidu Input Method charge a fee when others are free? Second, will users start to pay for Baidu Input Method on their mobile phones?

In today's world where short videos and social networks are so developed, netizens are particularly good at "believing everything they hear". So, when they hear that an input method has started to charge a fee, they will first curse. Some people may not have used Baidu Input Method, or even don't understand the details of Baidu Input Method's charging policy, so let's start with a few curses.

In fact, as early as 2017, when Sogou Input Method launched membership payment, netizens' evaluation of it was exactly the same as their evaluation of Baidu Input Method today.

Netizens' aversion to paid products is natural. After all, the rapid expansion of the Internet is largely due to the free model. Watching TV, listening to music, reading novels, searching, etc. are all free. After being nurtured by the free model for more than a decade, they suddenly have to face various payment situations. In addition to the pressure of their own wallets, whoever launches a paid product will be criticized. Who did Baidu Input Method offend by launching a paid model?

1. Just a value-added service

From the user's psychological point of view, no one likes to pay, but we need to figure out what the product is that makes us pay for it, otherwise, wouldn't it be a waste of time? It's a complete waste of emotion to criticize it and finally find out that it has nothing to do with you.

On February 3, 2024, Baidu Input Method pushed version 12.2.0, and its version introduction mentioned that "Baidu Input Method VIP is online". The first month of the continuous monthly package is 5.8 yuan, and then 22.8 yuan per month; the continuous annual package is 188 yuan in the first year, and 288 yuan per year from the next year.

Judging from the price alone, the price of Baidu Input Method VIP is not cheap. For video, the price of iQiyi and Tencent Video VIP annual membership is less than 200 yuan during the preferential period. If there is a promotion, the membership price of iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku is even lower. For shopping, the annual membership of JD Plus is only 99 yuan.

Compared with its own products, the number of registered users of Baidu Netdisk has exceeded 800 million, but the annual subscription price of Baidu Netdisk VIP is only 165 yuan.

Whether in terms of priority or product importance, the price of Baidu Input Method seems a bit expensive . 288 yuan a year, just an input method, after seeing the price list, it is no wonder that users complain about it.

Let's look at the services provided by paid Baidu Input Method: free skin wallpapers, free fonts, free AI creation tools, free generation of AI avatars, and no folding of Moments. However, Baidu Input Method did not mention that VIPs can be exempted from scene ads such as "input box", nor did it mention opening screen ads.

The paid Baidu input method is actually a typical value-added service route. This approach is very common in the Internet industry. Basic services are free, but some value-added service items, like the original QQ green diamonds, yellow diamonds, and red diamonds, have become more abundant in the mobile Internet era.

According to data from a third-party statistics agency, Baidu Input Method has nearly 600 million monthly active users. Faced with such a large user base, if Baidu Input Method suddenly charges all users, it will inevitably cause a backlash.

The truth behind "Baidu Input Method launches paid VIP" is that Baidu Input Method has launched value-added services for some users, such as skins, fonts, non-folding Moments, AI creation, etc., which are very valuable to some users. In other words, they just launched paid items, and you can buy them or not.

So far, Baidu Input Method has not used all means to force users to pay like video websites and digital music products . For example, there is a 120-second opening advertisement; a 30-second advertisement for a 3-minute video; various songs have to be paid, leaving very few free songs; some songs suddenly become pay-to-listen.

Video websites and digital music platforms use extremely poor user experience to force users to pay. Although these methods may seem a bit "rogue", they have also brought the number of paid members of video websites to nearly 100 million.

Reputation is not important, making money is important. There is no problem in making money from value-added services, as long as the way you do it is not so ugly, users will still accept it. At least Baidu Input Method has not charged all users yet. For this reason alone, some comments from netizens are unnecessary. If you don't like these value-added services, just don't pay for them.

According to Guo Jing's observations in the Internet circle, paid user experience is indeed better than free user experience, just like splash screen ads and ads everywhere in the App. If these ads disappear after paying, it will be really fun to use.

It’s up to you to decide whether to be frugal or not. You can choose to tolerate all kinds of unscrupulous advertisements, or you can choose the refreshing ad-free version.

2. Tool-type products also need to generate their own blood

After the heated comments, it seems that there is no impact on Baidu Input Method. Those who should use it are still using it, and those who don’t use it will choose Sogou Input Method, iFlytek Input Method, Octopus Input Method, etc. The outside world’s “explosion” over the payment of Baidu Input Method stems from the natural psychological resistance to the payment model.

However, from a side view, the launch of paid VIP by Baidu Input Method has lifted the "fig leaf" of tool-type products. Regardless of whether you are a tool-type product or not, and regardless of whether you have hundreds of millions of users, in the face of the coming 2024, you will need to generate your own blood. Whether you can make a profit in the end, you must at least hit out all the profit points first, and launch profitable projects as soon as the product is launched, without hiding them.

On the one hand, large companies are also under pressure to make profits . Baidu's 2023 Q4 financial report shows that the total revenue for the quarter was 35 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to Baidu (non-GAAP) was 7.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%. Among them, non-network marketing revenue was 8.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%.

In the past, relying on the advantages of Baidu's online marketing business, many tool-type products did not need to bear the "profit" KPI, but now that Baidu's online marketing business revenue growth has slowed down, other tool-type products need to "finance their own profits and losses."

Just like Baidu Library, which was hatched from the UGC model, it has been free for many years. It was first integrated into Baidu Education Division and then merged into Baidu Content Ecology Division. As a result, Baidu Library's paid road was unveiled. Now there are very few free library contents that can be downloaded and used. Any documents with a little value need to be paid to download.

Two other tool-type products, Baidu Chinese and Baidu Translate, have also added membership payment functions.

On the other hand, you can’t “win by doing nothing” . The reason why tool-type products can be used by users for free is that large companies are “not short of money”. Tool-type products can “win by doing nothing” and easily have tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of users. However, today’s Internet industry is more concerned with profit margins. No matter how many users you have, whether you can make money is the fundamental . This transformation of the Internet industry is related to two factors:

1. The era of high growth in the Internet industry has passed . Data shows that as of June 2023, the number of Internet users in China will reach 1.079 billion, and the Internet penetration rate will reach 76.4%. User growth is limited, and the apps used by users are still apps from a few years ago. Everyone can only share the cake from the original profit points of e-commerce, games, advertising, and value-added services, and the total amount of the cake is limited. Judging from the financial reports of several major Internet giants, revenue growth rates of more than 30% have been rare in the past, and most of them are only in single digits.

When Internet giants face the dilemma of growth, the tool-type products that used to be “rich” are in an awkward situation. They either shut down directly or go back to “making money”. In the past, Internet giants relied on high efficiency to dominate the market, but now that the label of “high efficiency” has fallen on them, it is really not easy.

2. Extreme competition among big companies . In the era of high growth, big companies can monetize their products no matter what they do, but now the monetization space is very limited, and the competition among big companies has reached its extreme. For example, short videos, live broadcasts, e-commerce, etc., almost all big companies are pushing these projects, and short videos and live broadcasts have completely penetrated into various head apps. In other words, Baidu, NetEase, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance and other big companies are actually in a competitive relationship.

In order to cope with the competition in the industry, large companies have allocated all their limited resources to these "star projects", such as the currently popular AI and large models. In just two years, hundreds of large model products have suddenly emerged in China.

After tool-type products lose the halo of big companies, they need to rely on their own "generation". We will see more and more tool-type products like Baidu Input Method launch membership payment.

In fact, with the advent of the digital age, it is inevitable for users to pay for tool-based products. If you want to improve work efficiency, then paying is the best choice. In real life, people who should pay will not refuse to pay because of some external prejudices. After all, work is more important. Compared with work efficiency, paying is just a drop in the bucket. After understanding this truth, perhaps we will not be so disgusted with paying for various tools used online.

However, the profit cycle of tool-type products is long and is closely related to the user's consumption level.

The 2023 financial report released by cloud storage service provider Dropbox shows that the company's annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of this quarter was US$2.523 billion, a year-on-year increase of 0.3%. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that its ARR growth has declined. As of the end of the fourth quarter, the company had a total of 18.12 million paying users, compared with 18.17 million at the end of the third quarter. After the financial report was released, Dropbox's stock price fell by more than 17%.

If a tool-type product wants to attract members, it needs to consider long-term business. What is its product value? What problems can it solve for users? As a user, are you willing to pay for Baidu Input Method?

Author: Guo Jing's Internet Circle

Source: WeChat public account "Guo Jing's Internet Circle (ID: guojingdequanzi)"