Hollywood Hunter

Monopoly itself is not wrong, patent protection is a kind of monopoly protection.

The anti-monopoly laws of various countries in the world are more to prevent monopolists from using their own technological market and other advantages to suppress competitors. In other words, monopoly is right, it is wrong to use monopoly advantage to suppress competitors.

However, in the actual implementation process, the monopoly standard has never been difficult to determine.

Vaguely defined standards have caused anti-monopoly to become a tool for political and economic games among enterprises, capital and even countries in many cases.

Eaglet, or the entire Westeros system, through the entire industrial chain layout of the World Wide Web technology, pioneered a new Internet era.

To this goal, companies such as Cisco, AOL, and Eaglet have invested billions of dollars in huge sums of money in the past few years. It stands to reason that with such a huge initial investment, the Westeros system can enjoy the benefits of the Internet industry with peace of mind.

The problem now is that the benefits involved in the Internet industry are simply too huge. It is so huge that the Westeros system is not only unable to be eaten by one family alone, but many people will not allow the Westeros system to enjoy this huge cake alone.

The three core senior executives of Eaglet, even Tim Berners Lee, who focused on technology research and development and were not so sophisticated about humans, saw the company's 1992 financial report and realized the problems.

With many memories of his two lives, Simon has a clearer picture of the situation that Eaglet will face.

Throughout the 1990s, Microsoft was tossed to death by the US anti-monopoly agency. To a large extent, it was not the monopoly of Microsoft operating systems, but the door classmates and several Microsoft shareholders who held Microsoft. Too many stocks.

When Bill Gates, Paul Allen and others continued to reduce their holdings, Microsoft gradually became a public holding company integrated with the US economy, and the operating system giant has never encountered a large-scale antitrust investigation.

After the financial report meeting in the morning, Simon discussed with Tim Berners Lee, Jeff Bezos and Carol Butts three senior executives in the afternoon to resolve the situation that Igreat would face.

Microsoft’s competitor is Apple, Intel’s competitor is AMD, and IBM’s competitor is SUN. For Eaglet, the problem now is that this new technology company that pioneered a new Internet era in advance, even one There are no decent opponents.

After completing the authorization of e-mail technology, both Microsoft and AOL, which have obtained commercial operating licenses, are preparing their own portal business.

However, even if Microsoft and AOL's online business go online and can compete with Igreat, in the eyes of outsiders, the three companies still belong to the same camp to a large extent.

The "Sherman Antitrust Act" of the United States has a clear definition. Collusion between affiliated companies to control the market is also a monopoly.

Eaglet has released a large number of patented technologies for the World Wide Web for free, and it is impossible to further release the core patents held by the company in the short term.

Without a competitor, it is also impossible to create a competitor out of thin air.

In fact, even the powerful Microsoft and AOL are unlikely to pose too much threat to Igreat in the short term, let alone build a competitor from scratch.

Then, there are only two ways to avoid the possible anti-monopoly pressure of Yigrete. One is to actively split. According to Simon’s original vision, the major businesses of Yigrete will be split into several different companies. The second is to carry out external financing as soon as possible, or conduct an IPO, and give up sufficient equity shares to the capital of all parties.

In the first way, there are some symptoms but not the root cause.

The second is to transfer equity and integrate Eaglet into the entire American economy. This is the most thorough solution.

In fact, Simon made such a plan a long time ago. For companies such as Cisco, AOL, and Eaglet, he only hopes to retain about 30% of the equity after continuing to reduce their holdings.

Taking into account the future market value of these companies, 30% of the shares are still a very large asset.

When the small meeting of several core management teams ended, the preliminary plan was finalized.

Eaglet Corporation will conduct its first external financing. It is expected to sell 10% of its shares and plan to raise US$1.5 billion.

According to Eaglet’s revenue of nearly US$2 billion in 1992 and a high growth rate of close to 400%, if it goes public, the company’s market value will definitely be on par with the current Cisco and AOL.

Therefore, the valuation of 15 billion US dollars is still very conservative for Eaglet.

As long as you have a little understanding of Eaglet’s position in the emerging Internet field and the financial data in 1992, you should be clear that the 10% of the shares and the $1.5 billion offer are very cost-effective.

If someone thinks Eaglet is making a big talk for Lions, then the other party is obviously not a worthy partner.

Although the quotation is as high as 1.5 billion US dollars, this 10% of the shares can not be bought by anyone who wants to buy it. If it is an Arab tyrant or a Japanese chaebol, sorry, let's go cool.

This part of the equity will only be sold to the capital forces that have a significant influence on the federal political economy in the United States, so as to provide assistance when Eaglet is under pressure from antitrust and other aspects.

People are always greedy.

Simon also knows that 10% of the equity will certainly not satisfy the outside world, and this part of financing is just a prelude.

Eaglet will also start the IPO plan as soon as possible.

Counting the equity incentives offered by senior executives such as Tim Berners Lee and the option incentives of many employees, Westeros’ shareholding in Igreat will quickly drop below 70% in the next few years.

San Francisco, Palo Alto.

At the headquarters of Eaglet Corporation, when the financing plan was finalized, the three Tim Berners-Lee people thought more about the equity incentive plan they had.

According to the original agreement, the five-year contract, each of them can get up to 5% of the equity award of Eaglet.

With the current development momentum of Eaglet, unless Simon repents to tear up the contract, the 5% shareholding has basically been determined.

So, even according to the 15 billion US dollars valuation of this financing, the value of 5% of the equity will reach 750 million US dollars.

750 million dollars.

Just this wealth is enough for them to occupy a relatively prominent position on the US 400 rich list.

When they first joined this company, none of the three felt that they could get so much.

As a result, during the rest of the afternoon, Simon could clearly feel that Jeff Bezos's tone was obviously a bit upright when he explained to himself the plan of Eaglet’s advertising alliance plan. .

No one can predict their future.

The current US$750 million has satisfied this descendant of Cuban immigrants from the bottom.

If Jeff Bezos knew that he would become the world's richest man with a net worth of more than 100 billion US dollars in another time and space, I don't know what he would think.

Of course, if it is always just if.

"We have tested the advertising distribution system on more than 20 cooperative websites. I think that accurate automatic advertising is not the best solution at this stage. For the time being, we should adopt a customized advertising strategy to tailor specific advertising for different advertisers. Advertising packages."

In another meeting room of Eagle Headquarters, Jeff Bezos explained the technical details of the advertising alliance plan, and then began to introduce the specific implementation plan.

The advertising alliance plan was naturally formulated by Simon based on the advertising alliance plans of the major Internet giants in his memory.

When it was first proposed, not every senior executive of Eaglet was in favor of this plan. Many people believed that the advertising affiliate program might lead to the emergence of a large number of Eaglet’s competitors. Therefore, compared with the advertising alliance program, Eaglet should focus more on its expansion in the content field.

At this stage, the news and information, online forums, micro-blogs, e-mails and other services of the Eaglet portal are developing rapidly, which also provides sufficient content support for the advertising business of the Eaglet portal. Because of the company's strong position in the content field, some management inevitably believe that only Eaglet is enough to support the entire Internet content supply.

This obviously violated Simon's original positioning of Eaglet.

In Simon’s plan, Eaglet will be a high-tech company focusing on building Internet platforms, and will never become an Internet media company focusing on content production.

With the popularization of the Internet, the differentiated needs of hundreds of millions of Internet users for online content are simply not what an Internet media company can provide.

By providing services such as search engines, micro-blogs and online forums, to provide Internet users with a content display platform, allowing more content providers and Internet users to produce their own content, is the way for Eaglet to survive.

In the era of Internet 1.0, Internet media companies such as Yahoo and AOL rushed to compete. The results seemed to be prosperous, but they all declined rapidly after the advent of the Internet 2.0 era.

The current Eaglet portal is just an excess for Eaglet.

The Google search engine and Facebook microblog that Eaglet has started to operate independently, as well as the Amazon online store that has quickly emerged in the past year, are the foundation for Eaglet to become the Internet super giant in the future.

However, this fundamental development strategy, of course, Simon will not promote it everywhere.

Within Eaglet, there are only a few core managers who know his specific ideas. Therefore, it is inevitable that many different voices will appear in the process of developing the advertising affiliate program.

With absolute control of Eaglet, Simon will naturally not be interfered by such objections. Instead, he undoubtedly requires the management to implement this plan, knowing Simon’s long-term plan for Eaglet, Jeff · Bezos and others are also very supportive of this plan.

Through the Eaglet advertising alliance program, many websites that cannot develop commercial business on their own also have a clear profit channel, which can accelerate the promotion of a hundred flowers in the Internet field. Only with richer content in the Internet field, can Eaglet's various businesses develop faster, which is actually a mutually beneficial relationship.

Ending the work schedule of Eaglet Company, it was already four o'clock in the afternoon.

Simon's day's work is not over yet, he left the headquarters of Eaglet, and rushed to the Tinkobair company founded by C girl Claire Gein.

According to Simon’s vision, Tinkobair has recently developed the first prototype of a digital music player. While there was still some time, Simon planned to go over and see for himself.

Arriving at the headquarters of Tincobair, not far from Eaglet, Lady C and Neil Brantley, another partner of Tincobail, were already waiting for Simon, and she also saw Lady C Behind him, the petite and petite Jennifer Berry.

I greeted a few people with Girl C. Seeing Xiao Jenni stepping forward, Simon couldn't help but put his hand on the girl's head and smiled and said, "Don't you need to go to class today?"

No way, the little girl is only the height of Simon's chest, which is really suitable for rubbing her head.

Jennifer didn't resist Simon's actions. Instead, she shrank her neck delicately. Her eyes with long eyelashes narrowed slightly, like a cat being petted by her owner. She did not forget to respond to Simon: "No class happens to be in the afternoon."

Although he knew the young girl's age very well, Simon still had a feeling of teasing a minor.

Looking at it again, Claire, Neil Brantley and others are all professional suits, but the little girl is wearing a very casual light yellow sweater and jeans, with a pair of white flat shoes on her feet, which makes her stand out in the crowd. Heterogeneous. It seems that some parent brought their children to the company when they went to work.

Simon actually understands that Janet arranged for Jenny to enter Stanford University. Because of what happened at the concert, Lady C and others naturally regarded her as their own woman, so she was so ‘indulged’.

Smiled, Simon said nothing more, and walked into the office building with everyone.

Jennifer Berry followed the crowd obediently, her beautiful eyes quietly looking at it.

She had discovered one thing just now.

This time, it was Alison Norris, girl A, who was acting as an assistant next to Simon. The'Big Jenny' who had always been very wary of them in the past did not come with Simon this time.

Although she didn't know the reason, the little girl realized that this seemed like a good opportunity.

Simon didn't bother to care about little Jenny's thoughts, and came to a laboratory in the office building. He quickly saw the prototype of the recently developed digital music player.

According to a series of trademarks filed by Tinker Bayer in advance, this machine will be named iPlayer.

Simon feels that iPlayer is more suitable as the name of a digital music player than iPod. As for the iPod, which also applied for a trademark, it may be used in other electronic products in the future.

Neil Brantley first showed Simon the basic structure of the prototype.

The prototype in front of us is as big as a tape player at the current stage. It is far from the standard of matchbox size in Simon's memory, but it is also the limit that technology can achieve at this stage.

You know, the core storage device of the iPlayer player, a 1.5-inch micro hard drive, is already the size of a matchbox.

The 1.5-inch, 2.5-inch, and 3.5-inch standards for mechanical hard drives specifically refer to the size of the internal disk platter of the hard drive. The entire hard drive is often much larger.

In Simon's memory, the 1.5-inch micro hard drive was once the size of a ‘bubble gum’ instead of the current ‘matchbox’. The main reason is that the internal mechanical structure has not been optimized and compressed to the greatest extent. The current 3.5-inch hard drive is also much larger than the 3.5-inch hard drive in Simon’s memory.

Moreover, although the size is large, the capacity of the miniature hard disk is very small at this stage.

The prototype developed by Tinker Bayer uses a micro hard drive that IBM has not yet mass-produced and has a poor capacity of 20M. According to the MP3 audio format developed by Eaglet, at a higher compression level, the average size of each song is about 3M, and a miniature hard disk can only hold six or seven songs, which is still not as good as a record.

However, with the rapid growth of the computer industry, it is only a matter of time before the capacity of mechanical hard drives doubles.

Neil Brantley said that as long as the market demand is sufficient, the major hard disk manufacturers that have accumulated over the years are technically capable of rapidly increasing the capacity of micro hard disks.

In the short term, only one or two hundred megabytes of capacity is needed, which is sufficient for current digital players.

In terms of storage media, Simon certainly considered flash memory.

However, the current flash memory chips are limited to the development of semiconductor technology and the same limited market demand, usually only a few hundred K in capacity.

Although flash memory has many advantages over mechanical hard disks in terms of storage stability, read speed and energy consumption, because of its small capacity, in the next five to ten years, the only way to develop digital music players is to use micro hard disks. A set of solutions.