百度李昕晢谈搜索的未来趋势

    百度公司（Baidu Inc）首席财务官李昕晢本周三表示，很快，互联网搜索的一半将变成语音搜索或可视化搜索，而不是文字搜索。这也为我们解读百度对抗阿里巴巴（Alibaba Group Inc.）的最新之举——与另外两家中国公司刚刚签定一份8亿美元的协议——提供了新的视角。

    两个月前，百度、腾讯（Tencent Holdings Ltd）和中国最大的商业地产公司大连万达（Dalian Wanda）共同组建了一家合资公司，据说这家公司将成为阿里巴巴（Alibaba）的竞争对手。不过对于两家中国最大的科技巨头和一家购物中心运营商为何会走到一起，目前没有更多的细节可供参考。在《财富》（Fortune）近日在香港召开的“最具影响力女性论坛”（Most Powerful Women’s Forum）上，李昕晢提供了一些新的线索。

    她在接受《财富》编辑帕蒂•塞勒斯采访时表示：“移动意味着，人们可以在线下消费时做出购买选择。”她表示，百度希望消费者们凭着在商场里给某人的裙子照一张照片，就能做出购物决定，或是通过语音搜索就能得知附近哪能看电影。此外也可以有一些更普通的用途，比如“自拍看看你长得像哪个电影明星？或是拍一张植物的照片看看它究竟是哪种植物。”为了支持新的搜索，百度已经在深度学习项目上投入巨资。

    为了应对谷歌眼镜，百度也开发了自己的创新产品“百度眼镜”（Baidu Eye），这款产品也支持新的搜索技术，只不过与其说它是“百度眼镜”，还不如叫“百度耳”比较确切。李昕晢表示，“百度眼镜”和谷歌眼镜的不同之处在于，它没有镜片——部分原因是因为很多中国年轻人的视力较差，因此像谷歌眼镜那样的镜片屏幕在中国是不实用的。因此，“百度眼镜”会通过声音把搜索结果传导到耳机里。不要小瞧了“附近哪有卖耐克鞋的地方”这种小问题，它在中国大有市场。这样一来，百度的新技术就与大连万达的实体商场巧妙地结合起来，成了阿里巴巴的有力对手。

    李昕晢曾在通用汽车公司（General Motors Corp.）工作多年，后来于2008年加盟百度。李昕晢也是菲利普莫里斯国际公司（Philip Morris International）的董事会成员之一，而且也是第一位跻身《财富》美国100强企业董事会的中国女性。

    李昕晢表示，她预计移动搜索业务的收入很快就会超过PC搜索。上个季度，百度的移动端收入已经占到总收入的36%。在《财富》编辑塞勒斯的追问下，李昕晢表示，这个数字还在以每季度5个百分点的速度增长。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Baidu Inc.’s finance chief Jennifer Li said Wednesday half of Internet searches will soon be audio or visual instead of text, offering a new perspective on an $800 million deal between Baidu and two other companies in China to take on e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Inc. .

    Two months ago Baidu teamed up with Tencent Holdings Ltd and Dalian Wanda, China’s largest commercial property owner to form a venture that was billed as a competitor to Alibaba, but which lacked details about why two of the country’s largest tech giants and a mall operator were joining forces. At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s forum in Hong Kong, Li offered new clues.

    “Mobile means people can make purchasing decisions on offline consumption,” she said on stage in an interview with Fortune’s Pattie Sellers. She said Baidu expects consumers to making shopping decisions using photos of someone’s dress in the mall, or a voice search of where to see a movie nearby, in addition to the more ordinary uses like “taking picture of yourself, and what movie star do you resemble? Or take picture of a plant, what is it?” Baidu has pumped money into deep learning programs to support the new searches.

    Baidu Eye, the company’s answer to Google Glass, is also supporting the new search ventures. Only it’s not so much an Eye as an Ear. Li said Baidu’s device, in contrast to Google’s, is ear-mounted–in part, because so many Chinese young people have poor eyesight, making an eye screen impractical. Instead, a voice command delivers search results into the ear-piece. The market for, Where to buy Nike shoes nearby?is a big one in China, and one that ties Baidu’s contraption back to its goal of bridging online search into Dalian Wanda’s brick-and-mortar malls to take on Alibaba.

    A veteran of General Motors Corp. , who moved to China’s leading search company in 2008, Li sits on the board of Philip Morris International and is the first Chinese woman to serve on a Fortune 100 company board.

    Li said she expects revenue from mobile searches to surpass PC searches soon. In the latest quarter, mobile revenue was 36% of total revenue. When pressed by Fortune’s Sellers, Li said it was growing at five points each quarter.