The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 29 The Most Expensive Acquisition Since the Founding of Microsoft
Microsoft is far richer than Yahoo.

Yahoo has only started to rise this year, and has not explored a stable profitability.

Mainly rely on investor blood transfusion.

Microsoft has a good hematopoietic ability.

The operating system remained a top-notch monopoly until 20 years later.

If it hadn't been for losing to Google in the mobile operating system war, Microsoft would not have given up its position as the number one technology company by market capitalization.

Because of this, Yahoo's demand for Riot Games is more urgent.

The reason why investors are willing to give Yahoo such a high valuation is based on the premise that Yahoo will be profitable in the future.

The sooner this future materializes, the faster Yahoo's valuation will rise.

Yahoo's internal board of directors has estimated that if they successfully acquire Riot Games, their market value will increase by at least 50.00%.

So the price of [-] million is willing to open.

What Yahoo knows clearly does not make sense to Bill Gates.

So he offered a higher price tag.

"I am willing to sell some of the shares of Riot Games to Microsoft, but not all.

I want to continue to hold control of Riot Games.

I'd rather it be an investment than an acquisition. "

Zhou Xin looked at the other party seriously and said that Riot games are not important to him, but the future is not important.

For a long time from now to the follow-up, Riot Games will occupy a very important territory in his strategic planning.

That's the payment scenario.

A payment software needs to have enough payment scenarios to be able to occupy market share.

The reason why paypal can become No. 1 in the global payment software market share in later generations is because they had the payment scene of ebay in the early stage.

Relying on eBay to complete the accumulation of original users.

However, the payment software that Zhou Xin wants to build is in direct competition with PayPal, and it is unrealistic to seize eBay's payment scene in the early stage.

As for Amazon, Amazon itself also wants to be a payment software, so how can it give you the payment scenario.

Therefore, for Zhou Xin, the early payment scenario he envisioned is online payment.

For transactions that do not require a physical entity, such as video games, online books, and online audio and video, his payment software needs to occupy more than 90.00% of the market share in this market.

The reason why later generations rely on Ahri’s Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache relying on Goose Factory will spread from first-tier cities to second-tier cities and then to third-tier cities. In the final analysis, there is one sentence:
This is the payment scenario where the two giants are competing for mobile payment.

It seems to be a taxi war, but it is actually a war between Alipay and WeChat Pay.

As for why Zhou Xin doesn't get involved in online shopping, it's because the demands on people are too high from capital to management.

Zhou Xin has no motivation to compete with Amazon and Ebay in this very mature field.

In the past, he only had experience in managing about [-] people. If he was engaged in online shopping, it would have exceeded his upper limit in terms of management logic.

And it doesn't matter.

After the rise of the mobile Internet in later generations, there are many opportunities for overtaking on curves.

Human energy is limited.

Bill Gates explained: "Even if Microsoft acquires Riot Games, I will hand over the entire Microsoft game business to you.

The last time we met we said you need to start with the department heads.

It is because you have only proved that you have unique insights into certain fields before.

From a management point of view, it is the ability to solve a single problem.

And now judging from the Riot Games electronic community, you have proved that your abilities are compound.

You have a long-term plan for the development of the entire enterprise.

I can safely hand over Microsoft games to you.

Of course, considering that you are too young, I will arrange for you a deputy with enough experience to assist you in management.

You only need to be responsible for the planning and consideration at the strategic level, and he will be responsible for the specific implementation, which is your strength. "

Bill Gates said with joy: "I believe that with your participation, Microsoft Games will bring a new future to the entire video game industry.

We currently have very ambitious ideas internally. "

Zhou Xin interrupted: "Do you mean to make a game console similar to Sega?"

"Oh, you guessed it.

But yes, you know this field so well, it's not surprising that you guessed it.

Yes, we're going to make a game console.

But not in Sega's form.

We are going to be a home game console.

Microsoft intends to rebuild the entire game industry chain.

Including the acquisition of a part of the game studio, game distribution, and then to the game console.

Before seeing the electronic community in the form of Riot Games, I always felt that we were missing a piece.

Riot Games made up for the missing piece.

That's right, the construction of our entire game industry lacks the communication part.

Whether it is between players, or between players and game manufacturers, there is a lack of a platform for communication.

So Microsoft is very sincere about Riot Games.

Include my price.

This would be the highest single acquisition ever made by Microsoft.

More expensive than what we paid for Hotmail last year.

You should know that when we acquired Hotmail last year, Hotmail had more than 850 million users, while Riot Games had only 20.

Maybe that number is now 30.

When I shared my thoughts with Steve, he thought I was crazy! "

Steve Ballmer is now a Microsoft executive and will take over as Microsoft's president in the future.

Hotmail was the earliest e-mail service provider. After being acquired by Microsoft, it was merged into MSN service, and then the name became outlook.com.

There are two different theories about this acquisition, 4 million US dollars or 5 million US dollars, and the 4 million US dollars is used here.

Zhou Xin nodded slightly: "The value of a company does not depend entirely on the number of users.

If Fist Games is willing to open up free registration, its user numbers will also have a qualitative leap soon.

Moreover, the number of users of Hotmail refers to the number of registered users. In fact, a user is likely to register multiple accounts.

It is meaningless to use this figure to value a company.

Of course sir, I am not trying to refute you, but I want to tell you the value of Riot Games, I know very well.

And I am also willing to accept Microsoft or your personal investment.

But I can't accept a direct takeover.

It's not that an outright acquisition is bad, it's just that I like the name Riot and don't want it to become a Microsoft electronics community. "

This is also an important reason why Riot Games will never accept Yahoo's acquisition.

In a similar form, Microsoft may accept only investing and not interfering in operations, but Yahoo will definitely not.

For Yahoo, they need to keep users in Yahoo as much as possible, which determines that after Riot Games is acquired by Yahoo, it will be absorbed by Yahoo from name to management to users.

　Just to say a few words, some readers feel that I have passed the science popularization method, but the problem is that if I don’t explain these clearly, these numbers, company names and personal names will be confused.

　　Looking at acquisitions of US$[-] million from today’s standpoint, it would be considered too little. Any acquisition by Microsoft starts at billions of US dollars.

　　But in that year, this was already the highest single acquisition of Microsoft from its inception to 1998.

　　Finally, please follow up!Follow-up reading at the new book stage is very important for authors!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)