Sogou didn’t keep his last dignity.

Sogou is gradually losing its original territory.

On March 30th, sogou hardware product maintenance team announced that due to business adjustment, sogou hardware products.(Sugar Cat Watch, Sugar Cat at Home, Sugar Cat Dictionary Pen, sogou Translate Bao (Translation Pen), sogou Recording Pen)The service will be officially stopped at 23: 59 on May 30, 2024. After the service goes offline, it will no longer provide any online services, technical support or maintenance services.

This is an unexpected farewell. Former employees of sogou once said that after sogou was incorporated by Tencent, the original team only left employees in core business, and most employees in non-core business left after several rounds of business adjustment.

Since being acquired by Tencent, sogou has been saying goodbye to his former business.In August, 2022, sogou Game Center ceased to operate. The businesses that were shut down in succession in that year included sogou Map, sogou Net Alliance and so on. According to statistics, in less than three years, sogou has closed 12 businesses, leaving only star products such as input method and browser to support the scene.

For this business change, the relevant person in charge of Tencent said that everything is subject to the announcement.

Sogou didn’t keep his last dignity.

On December 8, 2014, sogou officially launched the company’s first smart hardware device, the children’s smart watch "Sugar Cat", and announced its entry into the smart hardware market.

Wang Xiaochuan, who was then in Sogou CEO, calculated that intelligent hardware would become the ticket for sogou to enter the AI field, which was once regarded as the second growth curve after sogou went public. In his plan, intelligent hardware is expected to support 10% of sogou’s revenue.

Since then, sogou has released many products, such as translation treasures, translation pens, recording pens and so on. In 2020, a sogou recording pen S1 with a price of more than 3,000 yuan was put on the Luo Yonghao studio, and Wang Xiaochuan also appeared in the studio as a product platform. It is worth mentioning that the night was the first live show in Tik Tok, Luo Yonghao, and the cumulative number of viewers exceeded 48 million, which also made this recorder gain unprecedented exposure.

The founder shouted at the platform hard, but sogou didn’t break the ice in the field of intelligent hardware.From the single field of translation pen, it is difficult for sogou to cross the two mountains of Iflytek and Netease.

The White Paper on the Development of Voice Industry in China in 2020~2021 shows that Iflytek ranks first with 60% market share, while Internet giants such as Ali and Baidu occupy about 20% market share, and the market presents a head-to-head competition pattern.

The revenue of intelligent hardware is also difficult to support sogou’s ambition.Its last financial report before delisting showed that the total revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $147.5 million, of which search and search-related revenue was $137.2 million, down 43% year-on-year, accounting for 92%; Other revenue, including intelligent hardware, was $10.3 million, down 50% year-on-year. The decline in revenue was mainly due to the company’s contraction of non-core business.

From the consumer side, the exit of sogou’s intelligent hardware has long been revealed. Many users who have bought sogou recording pens reported that more than a year ago, all the products in the official flagship store in sogou had been removed from the shelves, the recording pens could not be used normally for many times, and the related transcribing services were closed.

"After sogou entered the intelligent hardware track, a variety of products developed were only aimed at specific people and specific scenarios, and it was difficult to achieve a large-scale outbreak, so the contribution to related business revenue was very limited." Ding Daoshi, an Internet analyst, said.

What can sogou leave?

As a witness of the PC era, sogou was once a star unicorn company.

In 2003, 25-year-old Wang Xiaochuan took 12 part-time college students and spent 11 months making sogou Engine, a star product hatched from Sohu. At this point, Baidu has been firmly at the top of the search engine, and it is difficult for sogou to break through.

Three years later, sogou took the opportunity to introduce the input method, which won wide acclaim for its accuracy in pinyin input and rich associative vocabulary.

This also makes Sohu truly surpass Baidu in a certain field.According to public information, around 2010, the user utilization rate of sogou Input Method reached 79.7%.

Wang Xiaochuan also proposed a three-stage rocket mode, in which sogou input method is used with a browser, and the browser is used with sogou search. Above the limelight, many head Internet companies are eyeing sogou. Among them, Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360, is the most active. He wants to occupy a place in the search engine market by purchasing sogou many times.

Under the tug-of-war of various forces, Wang Xiaochuan brought in Ali’s investment, and sogou was officially separated from Sohu and developed independently. Because the resources of the two sides don’t fit together, and the effect of "1+1 > 2" has not been exerted, sogou and Ali also parted ways.

After several contests, sogou and others came to the last ally. In 2013, Tencent injected US$ 448 million into sogou, becoming the largest shareholder in sogou. Before that, Tencent had hit a wall many times in the search field and needed to inject competitive team resources urgently. According to the annual report released by sogou in February 2021, Tencent holds 39.1% of the shares of sogou and Sohu holds 33.8% of the shares of sogou, ranking first and second respectively.

After holding hands with Tencent, the development of sogou ushered in the second spring, not only did it not lose control of the company, but also gained a huge amount of resources from Tencent’s ecological circle.In May of the following year, sogou search integrated Tencent Soso resources to release a mobile search APP, and launched a cross-terminal service. In June, sogou opened the search for WeChat official account data of WeChat, further expanding the rich search content. It is understood that nearly 40% of sogou’s search traffic comes from Tencent.

From 2014 to 2016, sogou’s total revenue was US$ 386 million, US$ 592 million and US$ 660 million respectively, and the revenue growth rate was relatively fast. On November 9, 2017, sogou successfully listed on the NYSE, with a market value of $5.4 billion.

Since then, with the transfer of mobile Internet traffic portal, sogou has gradually moved away from the center of the stage. Before delisting, its market value was less than $5 billion, and finally it was privatized and acquired by Tencent.

"The market share of many businesses shut down in sogou is not large, and the original search engines and input methods have gradually withdrawn from the core competition circle. At present, it has become the mainstream practice of Internet companies to transfer resources to innovative businesses." Ding Daoshi said.

In the past two years, major Internet companies have stopped lavishing money, but focused on the core business that can bring stable revenue to the company. As an insignificant project in Tencent’s territory, the closure of many businesses in sogou has become inevitable.

This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account:Time Finance APP (ID: TF-APP), Author: Xu Xiaoqian, Editor: Shi Chengchao