Meta universe war! Baidu rushed to post "Gream" and was suspected of "rolling over", Meta Apple robbed people like crazy...
Meta universe war Baidu Apple
As 2021 is about to end, Baidu's multiple businesses have shown different development directions. On the one hand, the meta-universe field is gaining momentum, and on the other hand, the game live broadcast business is layoffs on a large scale.
On December 27th, Baidu officially released the meta-universe product "Hirang", which can hold meetings in meta-universe and achieve 100,000 people interact with each other on the same screen. So far, Baidu has not only sown the seeds in the field of Metaverse, but also issued "entry tickets" to 100,000 users in advance to enter the metaverse. As for the experience, that has to be said otherwise.
Source: Baidu Create 2021 Conference
When Meta Universe’s business was in full swing, Baidu was exposed to at least 20% layoffs in its live broadcast business, and almost all of its game department was laid off. Currently, Baidu has not responded to the incident. However, various sources of information show that the large-scale layoffs are related to Baidu's $3.6 billion acquisition of YY Live.
Whether it is to roll out the live broadcast business, or to enter the fields of games, autonomous driving, meta universe, etc., Baidu has made the determination to enter the game every new start, but every development is tortuous. Similarly, the current Meta Universe business also has a lot of challenges facing Baidu.
Live broadcast and game business layoffs, how is the development of Baidu’s new business of "Yuan Universe"
Back to ten years ago, Robin Li publicly stated that when the company has grown to a certain scale, it will try to open up more business lines. Today, Baidu has indeed opened up a diversified business line under the leadership of Robin Li, and has continued to expand its ecosystem. In the video live broadcast business, YY Live is the largest acquisition in Baidu's history. In November 2020, Baidu spent US$3.6 billion to acquire YY Live, and Cao Xiaodong airborne it.
However, YY live broadcast did not develop in the direction of Li Yanhong's plan. The live broadcast brought traffic to monetize, but instead brought a huge "pit" to Baidu. Public information shows that after YY took over, Baidu's live broadcast revenue of nearly 1 billion has become zero. This year, the revenue has exploded, and Baidu has to cut unprofitable departments.
Judging from the past acquisition cases, Baidu is all rushing to gamble on the "outcome." It's a pity that in most cases things are counterproductive. How to fill the holes caused by YY live broadcast? One of the most promising "Meta Universe" businesses nowadays has become another "thread" that Baidu must seize.
The budding Meta Universe is developing "crazy" under the layout of technology giants. In addition to Baidu, domestic and foreign technology giants such as Nvidia, Meta, Alibaba, and Huawei are all catching up on the trend.
Nvidia took the lead in igniting the passion for the technology giant's entry into the meta universe. In August of this year, NVIDIA provided the foundation for the establishment of Metaverse's simulation and collaboration platform-NVIDIA Omniverse. According to the introduction, Omniverse is a complete ecosystem composed of five components including Nucleus, Connect, kit, simulation and RTX, which is the base of the technology platform for the metaverse to construct virtual space. The appearance of the Meta Universe platform means that Nvidia is already publicly looking for partners.
Baidu has become the first partner of NVIDIA, and the two parties will jointly build AI Meta Universe. With the cooperation of the giant Nvidia, Baidu's Metaverse will have a solid hardware base. From the perspective of the strength of its partners, Baidu's Metaverse is worth looking forward to. At the same time, this also releases a signal that, in addition to "single fight alone", the strong combination between the top players has also become a new model on the meta-universe circuit. Prior to this, Baidu Metauniverse "Greetings" had been opened, and with the first batch of experience users, Baidu was the fastest entrant among domestic companies to present Metaverse to consumers.
In response to this, Zhou Hongyi said in an interview with the media that Baidu’s Meta universe product "Hirang" has been made with Huajiao for a long time, but it has not been particularly successful. So, what is the sense of meta-universe experience brought by "Greek Rang", and can it be successful in the future?
"Hearon" was complained? Technical bottlenecks such as computing power and interaction still need to be broken through
According to the introduction, relying on Baidu's brain capabilities in the fields of vision, speech, natural language understanding, Baidu is empowering AI technology in the meta universe. The meta-universe brought by "Gream" is a world of Mobius ring-shaped planets, which presents scenes of Optimus Prime, mountains and rivers, Sanxingdui, Communication University of China, etc. Users who bring VR to participate in the actual measurement can walk freely in the meta universe and interact with Xiaodu through earphones and microphones.
However, after the actual measurement, many users said that they would experience dizziness after wearing VR, and problems such as stuck position and unsmooth operation would occur. There are also technically immature places in the virtual world created by the "Greek" metaverse. For example, users can walk through walls, the store has no owner, and cannot enter the store. Netizens bluntly said "scare the first batch of metauniverse tourists." ".
Source: Schlieffen
Baidu is also very aware of the immature "Greek", so it calls the "Greek" released this time "minus 6.0 version". Baidu Vice President Ma Jie said that vision, hearing, and interaction are the three mountains that hinder the development of Metaverse, and the challenges brought about by technical difficulties are very large. For example, functions such as generating virtual characters through pictures or a sentence, summoning Xiaodu, etc., all need to break through a series of technical bottlenecks, as well as the support of strong basic technical capabilities, of which the demand for computing power cannot be ignored.
This show is a large-scale meta-universe gathering 100,000 users. It needs to be placed under the same server, with the help of data transmission algorithm tuning and local rendering engine tuning, and the construction of large-capacity and high-concurrency servers to improve the system’s performance. stability. Baidu said, "The AI native cloud created by Baidu Smart Cloud provides the world of "Greetings" with PFLOPS-level super-heterogeneous computing power, hundreds of GB of bandwidth resources, and infinitely expandable storage to support this Super large-scale data transmission project."
The meta-universe brought about by "Gream" is still in the exploratory stage. Breaking through the technological bottleneck is not only a challenge for Baidu to enter the meta-universe, but also a challenge for all players in the industry. It is too early to say the real meta universe.
Apple and Meta pinch each other? The meta universe set off a robbing war
On the other hand, what the technology giants need to build a true meta-universe is technology talents. Apple and Meta are one of the biggest players in Metaverse. Although Apple has not yet launched related products, media reports indicate that Apple will launch its first MR headset in 2022. The price is expected to be around US$3,000, making it the most expensive ever. Wearable device. And Meta VR helmets topped Americans’ favorite technology gifts, and sales soared. Therefore, the "grabbing battle" between Apple and Meta also started with the layout of the meta universe.
Picture: Quest 2
According to reports, Apple "poached" Meta public relations executives: Andrea Schubert, the former head of external communications for the augmented reality project, to prepare for the next augmented reality or virtual reality hardware products. On the other hand, Apple is retaining technology talents by issuing huge bonuses to prevent them from switching to competitors. According to reports, Apple is giving out-of-cycle bonuses to engineers in chip design, hardware, and some software and operations departments, ranging from $50,000 to $180,000. The bonus will be issued in the form of restricted stock with a four-year lock-up period, which also means that it will stay at Apple for at least the last four years.
Industry insiders believe that both Meta and Apple are planning to release new products in the fields of VR/AR, headsets, smart watches, etc. These two companies may become fierce competitors. This does not rule out that a competition on Metaverse is quietly happening. This includes the "talent war". Foreign media reported that in the past few months, Meta has hired about 100 engineers from Apple.
For the "Meta Universe" project that requires more technical capabilities, it needs to have enough scientific and technological people to support it. Technological talents such as engineers determine what kind of meta-universe form the player will eventually show. At present, China has not yet started the "grabbing battle" in the field of Metaverse, but the "grabbing battle" has been going on all the time. What is certain is that when the domestic players start the "grabbing battle" of Metaverse, the development process of Metaverse It will speed up again.
