Therefore, Baidu focused its business and adjusted the structure to support emergin businesses, such as health. However, products that provide doctor-patient service and doctor service, strangely, don’t belong to Baidu Health Business Division.

　　In March 2015, Baidu Zhidao launched its patient-doctor Q&A community “Muzhi Doctor”; a month later, Baidu Marketing Center released “Baidu Health”; Baidu Zhida had an O2O platform “Yao” targeting medicine delivery; while Baidu Health Brain and Baidu Smart Health Device Platform are also separate units.

　　Five years ago, Baidu invited doctors and experts to compile entries in the health sector and gradually stepped foot on the health information service. However, it never had any concrete moves in the sector, and Baidu never made profit out of these entries.

　　Perfecting these entries was more like a supplement to the search business. “Health and medicine contributed to 35 per cent of Baidu’s profit, so we can’t lose in this sector,” Li Zheng, then-head of Baidu’s external cooperation division at ESG, once told the media.

　　However, a former employee at the Baidu Health Business Division revealed to TMTpost that there was huge error in the figure. Based on JP Morgan’s estimation, medical ads accounted for 15 to 25 per cent of Baidu’s annual revenue. In comparison, “medical ads only contributed to 12 per cent of Sogou’s revenue,” as Wang Xiaochuan, founder and CEO of Sogou, once revealed to media.

　　After the “We Zexi Incident”, revenue from medical ads dropped significantly, which ultimately caused the sharp decline in total revenue in Q2, 2016.

　　According to a former employee at Baidu Health Busines Division, the only connection between search business and Baidu Health Busines Division was that “search business provides the best traffic gatewaty for Baidu Doctor”. Since Baidu Doctor was about matching doctors and patients, Baidu will recommend users to register directly through Baidu Doctor when they are searching for relevant information.

　　Li Junming, a former employee at Baidu Health Business Division and founder of Yihubao.com, issued an article after the dissolve decision was made in February, saying that:

　　I was responsible for the project “Search and Register”. At first, we planned to take full advantage of Baidu’s huge search traffic, grab internet users’ huge amount of hospital registration data and directly meet users’ needs. Therefore, we could nurture users’ awareness to register at hospitals online and thus create a “gateway”. However, since we didn’t take some measures, there wasn’tmany online registration requests. At last, we were downgraded since we failed to meet the KPI for Q3.

　　In fact, since it’s hard to coordinate single-point health service, it’s natural that efficiency failed to be improved effectively.

　　As to the reason why some health-related services weren’t included in Baidu Health Business Division, a former employee at the division guessed that the fundamental reason was that “Baidu Health Business Division was simply not good enough”; another former employee revealed to TMTpost that for a while, seven business divisions at Baidu conduct businesses related to health and medicine, so it was impossible for Baidu Health Business Division to integrate all their services.

　　Indeed, what Baidu Health Business Division could do was quite limited.

　　After all, the business division couldn’t touch the core in the health sector with simply online hospital registration business, and thus couldn’t solve the more urgent problem, resource shortage. Although Baidu Doctor had some value, it couldn’t affect the entire industry. In addition, it was difficult to find an appropriate profit model. Other rival products, such as DXY, Guahao.com, Chunyuyisheng, Haodf.com, have all turned to offline scenarios in an attempt to find offline service closed loops. However, Baidu couldn’t rely on such heavy-asset methods.

　　Therefore, it came as no surprise that performance of the business division was the worst.

　　Value, or KPI?

　　“What’s wrong with Baidu? From Zhida, O2O to unmanned driving… it seems that none of them can make it. Why is it that Baidu has enough experts and proper resource, but still can’t succeed?” an internet user once asked on a Chinese social network platform.

　　There are many other people who have the same doubts. After the “We Zeixi Incident” broke out, Robin Li issued an internal letter titled “Stay Gold, Or Baidu Would Go Bankrupt Within A Month” and shared his reflection: