wild 1995

Chapter 112 Crazy
Darmstadt is located in the south of Frankfurt, with a population of only about 14. It is a small town-level city, but it is quite influential in the computer industry. Not only Darmstadt University of Technology, one of the German TU9, the German Computing Center, Germany Research institutions such as the Telecom Network R&D Center are also the headquarters of the famous software company Software AG.

The World Wide Web Conference was held at the Technical University of Darmstadt. The person in charge of the reception was a brown-haired girl in her twenties with a very common name, Karen, and a very famous surname, MacArthur.

Karen MacArthur is the official webmaster of W3C. Since W3C members are distributed all over the world, she also serves as a network coordinator, responsible for communication among members. I have communicated with Di Ye several times by email before, and I am quite familiar with it. , After meeting, he smiled and said, "Di, you are the most handsome oriental guy I have ever seen."

"Thanks. But I can't say the same, because I've seen Jennifer Aniston on TV, but you're only slightly worse than her, maybe 1%."

In April 1995, when the first season of "Friends" was on the air, Aniston was in full swing and was highly sought after. Karen was very pleased with this compliment, smiled even brighter, and offered to pour a cup of coffee for Di Ye.

Di Ye came earlier, and he was the only one at the reception. After signing his name on the register and getting his badge, he chatted, "Karen, can I ask you a question?"

"My family has nothing to do with that five-star general."

"That's not the question. What I want to ask is, why did you go to MIT and work for the boring guys at W3C when you're from Princeton?"

Although Karen is only a webmaster, she has a double bachelor's degree in computer science and artificial intelligence from Princeton University. She pretended to be helpless and said: "Because I couldn't find a good job, I had to work for them."

"I don't believe it, because any company in Silicon Valley will open its doors if you want to."

"Well, actually, I'm not very interested in programming, and I want to be a popular science writer. I think the World Wide Web is a good subject, so I come to W3C to work and collect writing materials."

"So you'll leave the job after you collect the materials?"

"Of course, I can't be a webmaster forever."

The W3C has just been established for less than a year, and the organization work is still relatively sloppy. Before coming to Germany, Di Ye only learned about the schedule of the World Wide Web Conference through emails, but he did not know which important figures would attend, so he asked Karen inquired and learned that several well-known industry leaders would come.

Among them, there are three most important bosses, namely Americans, French and British.

The American is Albert Weiza, deputy director of the MIT Computer Science Laboratory, founder and first chairman of the W3C;

The Frenchman is Jean-François Abramatic, the founder of the W3C European branch, the director of development and industrial relations of the French National Institute of Information and Automation (INRIA), and the original inventor of CSS. Lay and Burt Boss both worked at INRIA;
The British is Bob Hopgood, an expert in computer graphics. He served as the head of the computer department at the famous Rutherford Laboratory for 15 years, participated in the formulation of many international standards, and was awarded by Queen Elizabeth in 1992. After retiring in 1994 with an OBE, he shifted his interest to the world wide web.

"Di, do you know that Mr. Hopgood is very interested in the WebP image format, and asked me about you yesterday."

"is it?"

Hopgood’s English name is Hopgood, which is a rather strange surname. Di Ye found information about him in his memory through Xiaohonghua, because this person participated in the research and development of the PNG image format.

If there is no WebP, in 1996, W3C would gather a group of experts to develop the PNG image format because it could not bear the high patent fee of GIF. PNG is a recursive writing method that means PNG is not GIF, and it is officially released. It was later changed to the innocuous name "Portable Network Graphics".

WebP uses a lot of new technologies in computer graphics. It is natural for Hopgood to be interested, but Di Ye is not very interested in him. After all, the World Wide Web is a stage for young people. What use is a retired old man?
"Karen, do you know Thomas Reardon from Microsoft?"

"Of course I do. He's an unlucky guy. He's also a lucky guy. He was thrown into a corner by Bill Gates and forgotten for a whole year. He was only rediscovered last week. Then he was promoted like a rocket. I heard he is now He is the senior vice president of Microsoft, and is responsible for the research and development of IE browser..."

Anderson said that Reardon was the person Gates trusted the most, but Karen said that Reardon was lucky. Di Ye was a little surprised by the diametrically opposite information. After the network security meeting in the morning, he approached Reardon in the rest area. After I logged in, after some communication, I suddenly understood.

On April 1994, 4, Bill Gates set up a browser development team, a total of 5 team members, Reardon was one of them, and then the rest of the team members ran away, only he and another unlucky guy stayed During this period, he often participated in various conferences held by W6C and became a top expert on World Wide Web technology.

On March 1995, 3, Bill Gates was alarmed by Netscape's press conference. He remembered the browser development team he had formed. He ran over to inspect the next day. Overjoyed by Reardon's outstanding personal ability, he was promoted from researcher to senior vice president on the spot.

So when Anderson said trust, he referred to Reardon's ability, and when Karen said luck, he referred to Reardon's position, and the two were not contradictory.

Bill Gates has a good vision. Reardon not only has excellent programming skills, but also has a very forward-looking thinking. He has a clear understanding of the future development of the Internet. In addition to technologies such as HTML and CSS, he also pays attention to information Content services such as search, instant messaging, and streaming media, it is believed that with the development of Internet speed, these will all be realized in the browser.

Reardon is a typical man of science and technology, very low-key, only concerned about technical issues, not very interested in social and business operations, so his reputation is not obvious, this personality is completely opposite to Anderson's, so that the business between IE and Netscape The battle has a little more epic sense of fate.

But now, with Di Ye's crossing, the two-power struggle for hegemony has become a three-legged confrontation, and it is not yet known who will win the battle in the future.

On the afternoon of April 4, the organizer held a seminar on CSS. At the meeting, Di Ye showed the beta version of the Athlon browser that supports CSS 12, which aroused heated discussions. During the discussion, he Summon the little red flower, listen to the opinions and suggestions of a group of world-class programmers, fix all the bugs that night, and then add some new features that are only available in CSS 1.0, and continue to demonstrate them the next day.

The terrifying update speed shocked everyone, and the effect of live demonstrations was far more intuitive than empty discussions. Therefore, Di Ye's strategy of promoting CSS was a great success. On the morning of April 4th, his third When the new features were demonstrated, no one raised objections anymore.

Reardon has Microsoft behind him, Diye has Goldfinger behind him, and Anderson has nothing behind him, so he is the most anxious. Seeing them get together every day to study technical issues, he feels that something is wrong, so at noon on April 4th, please Di Ye went to eat at a very famous local steakhouse to inquire about the situation.

"Di, you leaked all the technical secrets of implementing CSS to Reardon, which is very unfair to us at Netscape."

"I told Eric and Lu the same."

"Come on, does ten thousand dollars to a beggar have the same impact as ten thousand dollars to a rich man?"

While cutting the steak unhurriedly, Di Ye reminded with a smile: "Athlon is open source and it is fair to everyone."

Anderson was exhausted by his ambiguous attitude these days, and he didn't want to go around in circles any more. He said simply, "Di, what kind of conditions do you want before you are willing to merge with our Netscape?"

"Mark, let me ask you a question first."

"what is the problem?"

"In your mind, is Netscape a tool to become a billionaire, or a career worth fighting for a lifetime?"

Anderson was stunned when he heard this.

When Netscape was founded last year, Jim Clark gave $400 million, and Anderson didn't pay a dime. He only got 20% of the shares based on his fame and the credit for recruiting the Mosic R&D team.

After the release of Netscape 1.1, the feedback from the mainstream media and ordinary users was very positive, and the market share reached a new high, breaking through the 60% mark. Wall Street was very optimistic about Netscape’s IPO, raising the valuation from 3 million US dollars to 5 million US dollars. Based on this calculation, Anderson has basically realized the dream of a billionaire.

Things that are too easy to get are often not cherished very much. The success comes too suddenly, which makes Anderson always feel like floating in the clouds. Now when Di Ye asks such a question, he suddenly feels a little dazed and doesn't know how to answer.

"Mark, you don't need to answer, I already know what you really think from your expression."

Di Ye put down his knife and fork, and said seriously: "Athlon is my business, not a tool to make money, so if our two companies merge, it should not be Netscape merging Athlon, but Athlon merging Netscape."

"Di, stop joking..."

"Mark, when you were in Amsterdam, you said that Microsoft was going to pay $1 million for no more than 20% of Netscape, right?"

"Yes."

"I can also pay 1 million US dollars to acquire 20% of Netscape's shares, and then exchange Athlon for 20% of the shares. In this way, you and Clark can cash out part of the funds and leave the market, and it will not affect my continuing to be the leader of the World Wide Web." Sheriff, how about a win-win situation?"

"Are you crazy?!"

(End of this chapter)