Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 781 Online Services in the First Year of the World Wide Web
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Making a movie is just a small part of serving his own huge industry. After giving Cheng Long a few outlines and confirming that the other party understood it, Tang Huan ignored it and continued with his business.

On November 11, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 29, requiring Iraq to comply with previous relevant resolutions within a time limit, immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Kuwait, and restore its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity - the specific deadline is January 678, 1991 , and authorizes "the implementation of Resolution 1 by all means necessary."

In other words, the United Nations issued an ultimatum to Iraq and authorized the use of force in a form of diplomatic language.

At the same time, the 34-nation alliance supporting the Kuwaiti royal family finally took shape, and the richest man has completed his mission, which is worthy of the benefits that the Kuwaiti royal family gave him.

In fact, taking the opportunity of walking around, Tang Huan also did a lot of "private work" for his high-tech industry.

Personal computers have developed at an astounding rate from the 1970-bit era in the 8s, to the 1980-bit era in the 16s, and to the current 32-bit era.

It is estimated that at this stage, there are more than 1000 million personal computers in operation all over the world.In terms of annual sales, the United States is undoubtedly the largest market, with annual sales approaching 250 million units and sales of about 200 billion US dollars; Japan ranks second, with annual sales of more than 59 million units and sales of [-] billion. In the beginning of the dollar.

In Europe, which ranks third, the market situation is relatively complicated.Affected by many factors such as economy, technology, and open environment, the imbalance in market distribution is very prominent. Two-thirds of the market share is concentrated in Western Europe, and further concentrated in Germany, Britain, France and Italy, accounting for almost 70.00%; In contrast, in Eastern Europe, the annual sales volume of personal computers is less than 100 million units, of which about 30 units are in Poland, about 28 units in Czechoslovakia, and about 10 units in Hungary.

Although the annual sales volume of personal computers in the entire European market is close to that of the United States, the profit contribution is not as good as that of the Japanese market. The reason is that the American market and the Japanese market have eliminated Intel80286-level 16-bit architecture products and Intel80486-level 32-bit architecture products. has become mainstream, while the European market is still flooded with a large number of cheap personal computers. Commodity, which initially avoided the fierce competition in the US market, is dumping PC toys in the European market with hardware specifications that are essentially equivalent to game consoles and a price of about US$300. This is enough to illustrate. problem.

However, compared to the relatively closed pattern formed by the Fangyuan PC compatible machines manufactured by Japanese manufacturers dominating the domestic market, European countries have already ceded this position to American manufacturers—in the era of 8-bit architecture, European personal computers Computer companies can be described as contending among a hundred schools of thought, but after the transition to the 16-bit architecture era, most of them were eliminated; in the current 32-bit architecture era, they are basically extinct.

The next development direction of personal computers will not only continue to improve performance vertically to support multimedia and other applications, but also evolve into Internet terminals horizontally.This obviously gives Europe, which aspires to transform into an all-round alliance, a new chance to catch up.

When Tang Huan held talks with leaders of European countries, he presented facts and lobbied for many cooperation projects in a reasonable manner. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand both communicated with each other. It was good, but it had to stop in the UK because the political scene here had changed.

Margaret Thatcher, who was re-elected as British Prime Minister for three consecutive terms, was unpopular because of the implementation of a new local tax system - the poll tax, and because of wrong measures to deal with economic problems such as raising interest rates to 15%, she further lost money from the middle class and enterprises. The core support of the political and business circles, coupled with increasingly serious political differences on the issue of European integration, finally led to the end of the situation, and he resigned sadly, handing over the position to John Major, the chancellor of the exchequer in his cabinet.

The British Prime Minister, who had just been appointed by Buckingham Palace, is very busy now, and seems to have a somewhat indifferent attitude towards the richest man. Tang Huan did not take the initiative to join in, and simply went back to his home and continued to run the IT kingdom on the American side.

After nearly a year of promotion, the concept of the World Wide Web has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so much so that the media began to circulate a saying that 1990 was the first year of the World Wide Web.

In fact, after so many years of accumulation, the signs that the Internet will take off are becoming more and more obvious.

After all, the number of personal computers at this stage provides enough access terminals for the Internet; and on the west coast of the United States, under the continuous urging of Tang Huan, Pacific Telecom, the speed of modem access to the Internet has reached a maximum of 28.8Kbps, which is a great contribution to the network. The application environment construction has provided a clear demonstration.

At the group executive meeting, Steve Case, who was almost the last to accompany him, introduced the recent operations of AOL, America Online, which is constantly burning money, with passion as the CEO.

At this stage, AOL's biggest achievement is that the number of users has exceeded 100 million in the industry.

Regarding the specific concept of this data indicator, it is necessary to first point out the current Internet access method.

In the original time and space, the well-known way of surfing the Internet is to open the web browser, enter the URL, and then surf freely to the fullest while ensuring that the network is connected.

The current way of surfing the Internet is obviously different—when a user turns on the modem and connects to the Internet, he directly enters an online service system like America Online, and the surfing content is provided by it.

That's why subscribers pay the online service company, not the telco -- the online service company has already negotiated the price and leased the physical line from the telco.

America Online's industry-leading breakthrough in the number of one million users refers to this subscriber.It is not difficult to see that there is a big conceptual difference between it and Internet users in the conventional sense in the original time and space.

To be more precise, the current online service companies are playing the role of Internet_Service_Provider—Internet Service Provider, or ISP. Subscribers are very sticky, and the gold content is very direct. Their scale directly affects the income level.

Now, AOL has more than 100 million subscribers, which means that the service fee alone can earn tens of millions of dollars.

Steve Case, who is only 32 years old this year, dares to think and do, is full of drive, and even plans to innovate the current monthly subscription package mechanism in order to further win over users, that is, to cancel all kinds of time limits and turn it into a service after paying a monthly fee. , surfing the Internet at any time, 7×24 hours surfing is no problem, that is to say, it is the same charging method that users are used to after more than ten years in the original time and space.

When Steve Case made a request to the representative of Pacific Telecom from a distance across the huge conference table to further reduce its business scope, that is, the cost of lines in the west coast of the United States, the other party refused in a bad manner—we had already I have done a thorough market survey, and now the price of slow network access for user terminals on the west coast of the United States is maintained at about two dollars, which is already an ultra-low price that can stop gods from killing gods and gods from killing Buddhas.For the growth of America Online, we can't put all our hopes on squeezing the communication companies. We are two companies with separate calculations for profits, okay?

Of all the people present, Steve Case was the most junior and the most shameless. After being embarrassed, he just shrugged his shoulders, and then pulled the conversation back and said: "Of course I have never served myself in AOL. There has been a slack in quality."

"If the monthly subscription time limit is really cancelled, then AOL's servers will definitely not be able to cope with the rapidly expanding user visits, which will affect the current user experience that everyone is relatively satisfied with." Tang Huan slowly analyzed: "You have to play the cards one by one and throw them all out at once. It's fun, but what if you don't have any trump cards to use in the subsequent competition? After all, online service companies that can survive to this day are all right. The price war has become quite bearable. The focus of AOL's work should be to practice hard work."

Similar to other industries, the competition in the AOL service market is as fierce as ever. Almost all of them have their own areas of expertise, and even have deep financial backers behind them. Support, but the future is bright and safe, but due to the position of the industry leader, the pressure to be caught up is extremely high.

Among the online service companies that have become climate at this stage, the longest history is CompuServe, a computer service company that can be traced back to 1969. Successful realization; in recent years, services such as e-mail and file sharing are still quite attractive, and the number of subscribers has reached 60.

In the third place is Prodigy, which has 46 subscribers—the magic company. This online service company was founded in 5000. The main funder behind it is CBS, which also invested in Apple. Retail chain Sears, and IBM.

The background of Prodigy also just illustrates an interesting phenomenon in the technical architecture of online service companies at present, that is, the competition between Fangyuan Computer Company and IBM in the computer field has more or less continued in this field—AOL’s background servers are all From Fangyuan Computer Company, the client terminal access devices are also Fangyuan personal computers and compatible machines; Prodigy’s client terminal access devices are mostly IBM-PS/2 and IBM-PC compatible machines; the software is also similar. Prodigy's BBS and email services are still very popular.

Another online service company that is backed by a big tree to enjoy the shade, I have to mention, is Genie funded by General Electric, and its subscribers have also reached the level of [-].

In addition to these online service companies that are inextricably linked to Fangyuan Computer, IBM, General Electric and other large companies with good technology and financial resources, there is another type of competitors that focus on providing content services, such as Dow Jones Dow_Jones_News/Retrieval - Dow Jones News/Retrieval, in operation since 1973, focuses on providing information on stocks, bonds, options and more.It is conceivable that the tariff is not generally expensive - the prime time reaches a maximum of 2.30 US dollars per minute, which is almost the price of an hour of the standard tariffs of those ordinary online service companies.

In terms of online service content, although AOL does not reach such a professional level, it is rich enough to stand out from the crowd. In addition to the regular content such as weather, stock index, ticketing, books, second-hand transactions, virtual communities, etc., with Tang Huan's Big Boss owns industries in video games, Hollywood, and sports, as well as investment in the media field. It provides online games, movies, records, sports events, online radio stations and other unique and popular content services.

The richest man convened a high-level meeting this time. Among the Internet issues, the current industry situation of online services is a focus.

The gold pen in Tang Huan's hand paused lightly on the notebook in front of him.All the participants who noticed this detail subconsciously straightened their backs and listened intently, no matter how powerful and brilliant they were outside.

“I must stress one point repeatedly, so that everyone can reach a consensus, that is, the Internet is a major trend that is close at hand, and if we ignore it, it will be extremely difficult for our large, coordinated fleet to quickly adjust its direction. "

"The Internet can make us a lot of money, but its inherent characteristics - freedom and free, we must also maintain a patient understanding. Monopoly advantages and profit grabbing need to be carefully figured out, otherwise it is easy to do bad things with good intentions, and Get twice the result with half the effort."

Seeing the thoughtful expressions on the faces of Steve Case and others, Tang Huan relaxed his tone and continued: "In addition to other development results including the continuous acceleration of the network, the World Wide Web will also have an impact on the Internet ecological environment. It has had a huge impact, and this is not because I am the inventor and founder touted by the media, so I am not deliberately bragging. This year is the well-deserved first year of the World Wide Web."

After the laughter stopped, Tang Huan looked at Steve Case and pointed out: "In addition to lowering tariffs, there are many other effective means of competition to get rid of your opponents. The preference for upgrading is one of them. America Online has made great progress in the graphical user interface, which is very worthy of recognition. In contrast, those who cling to the DOS interface because of the current network bandwidth and access speed are very shortsightedness.”

"More than ten years ago, it was remarkable that a personal computer could have 4KB of memory; but now it has increased by 1000 times - 4MB has become the mainstream configuration of personal computers."

"Network bandwidth and access speed will also follow this development trajectory. In a few years, those peers who made mistakes in their predictions will regret it."

"The application of the World Wide Web is another good opportunity to get rid of the opponent. America Online must accelerate the pace of embracing the World Wide Web."

(End of this chapter)