Video Game Empire

Now (AOL) in the entire Oriental Group, it can only be counted as a subsidiary of the younger generation. ⊥, it just completed a new round of financial evaluation not long ago, and the total valuation of the company is only 80 million US dollars.

But the company's status in Li Xuan's mind is not ordinary. It is an important part of Li Xuan's entire Internet plan. In another time and space, 1994 is known as the first year of the commercialization of the Internet in the United States.

Because this year there was a graphical browser called "Navigator", developed by a small company called Netscape. Since then, ordinary people can finally retrieve the information they want on the Internet conveniently through a browser.

Before that, the Internet was no stranger to many Americans. The online service companies represented by these companies have made indelible contributions to the early germination of the Internet in the United States.

AOL in another time and space, and its brightest moment was in 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble. It bought Time Warner for $183 billion. Ten years before this shocking merger, AOL was actually just a small company with total assets of less than $100 million.

America Online's profit model is different from the mainstream Internet wave companies in the 1990s. Internet companies headed by Yahoo mainly rely on providing users with free content to increase traffic and gather popularity for their websites, thereby attracting businesses to place advertisements on their websites and making profits through advertising fees.

AOL, on the other hand, makes money by building an independent virtual community, providing various services in the community, and then charging users a membership fee. AOL's model achieved great success throughout the 1990s. When Yahoo and other companies were still burning money for traffic, AOL had already created a steady stream of huge profits relying on its huge user base.

But AOL's model only worked in the early days of the Internet. Network retrieval is not convenient enough, and free content is not rich enough, so its one-stop fool service is competitive enough.

And as the Internet becomes more and more colorful in the twenty-first century, the decline of the AOL model is inevitable. But at least in the wild days of the Internet, AOL has carved out a right path to growth!

Of course, the company established by the Oriental Group in this time and space has no relationship with the AOL in another time and space. However, it is blessed by Li Xuan's rebirth halo. Its future development will only be more brilliant than the company with the same name and surname in another time and space!

"Mr. Li, compared with competitors such as Computer Service Company and Yuanquan Company, we charge the lowest service fee. The monthly price of 29.9 US dollars is only equivalent to the dial-up Internet charges of other companies. That is to say, we provide Online service that is practically free!

However, our low price strategy has indeed achieved remarkable results! By the end of this year, our total number of users is likely to exceed 1 million, and we will become the second largest online service provider in the United States after computer service companies! "

The company's celebration party is not over yet. After Mr. Hyde Walker left, Derek Owen couldn't wait to report the company's performance growth data to Li Xuan.

The company's biggest competitor, Computer Services, has been offering online services since 1979. Relying on the advantage of entering the market at the earliest, the other party has been cultivating in this field for 8 years, and only accumulated 1.1 million users. It only took the company three years to catch up with computer service companies. This made Owen's company, when introducing the situation in front of the big boss Li Xuan, inevitably a bit of a complacent look.

However, the number of users of the company has grown by leaps and bounds. In fact, it was exchanged for huge losses. From the establishment of the company to the present, the net profit in just three years has been as high as minus 100 million US dollars. Be aware that users pay $29.9 per month. It's just enough for the company to pay the telecom operator for renting the network. However, the news, games and other content provided by the company on the "America Online Community" all need to spend money to purchase copyrights.

For example, although Li Xuan is the largest shareholder of the broadcasting company, it does not mean that the company can obtain the copyright of various news information from the other party for free. At most, the company is looking at Li Xuan's face, giving the company certain price concessions and the right to choose. Just a reasonable convenience.

After two rounds of hype with "Sleepless in Hong Kong" tied to the Oscar at the beginning of the year and his recent bestseller "The Road to the Future", the word "Internet" has not left the American public's field of vision for more than half a year. .

Affected by this, American Internet users ushered in a surge this year. Also expected. And Li Xuan has done so much hard work, so naturally he must eat the biggest piece of fat. Therefore, as early as the beginning of the year, the company launched a timely fee discount measure, which was lowered from the original monthly fee of 49.9 US dollars to 29.9 US dollars in one go.

"Tell me about the progress of the acquisition of Yuanquan Company!" Using low prices to seize the market is an established strategy given by Li Xuan. What he is most concerned about now is whether the company can expand its market share as soon as possible.

"We previously made an offer of $3 million to the board of directors of Fountain Company, and the latest reply from the other party has been reduced from $5 million to $3.7 million! We are still negotiating during the session, hoping to control the final transaction price. Within $3.5 million!

Fountain has 120,000 users, and after we complete its annexation, we will soon surpass Computer Services and become the largest online service provider in the United States! "Irving immediately briefed on the progress of the negotiations.

"It's a lot of dreams. We don't need to worry about the small differences of two or three thousand dollars, and agree to the other party's offer as soon as possible!" Li Xuan shook his head and said, he didn't even care about the company's loss of 100 million US dollars, let alone the difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars. offer, "Is it possible that we might acquire a computer services company?"

If the company can gobble up computer service companies, it will be able to completely dominate the online computer service market in the United States. You must know that apart from companies and computer service companies, the source company with 120,000 users has been ranked the third largest company in the industry, while the remaining small companies have less than 100,000 customers, which is not worth mentioning at all. .

"We had an offer of $30 million. We asked a computer services company for their online business unit, but they rejected it! The other party has recently been ambitious and is preparing to enter the online services market in Europe and Japan.

So unless we offer a very attractive price to buy the computer services company directly from its parent company h&r-, it will be very difficult to achieve our purpose! And the company from Kansas City. Spent $520 million when it bought a computer services company in 1980. We want to acquire it now, at least $600-700 million! "Owen shook his head and sighed.

The computer service company is not a pure online service provider. To acquire the other party at a price of 600 to 700 million US dollars, it is not worth the gain for the Eastern Group and the company. Instead of wasting a lot of money on acquiring a lot of useless assets from a computer service company, it's better to spend it directly on opening up new markets!

As soon as Li Xuan heard the introduction of the other party, he immediately lost interest in the computer service company. He paused and said, "The Internet market in the United States has only just begun to sprout, and now is the first step in a long marathon!

At this time, pursuing the number of users does not make much sense. What is more important for us is to build our own soft power. When the wave of Internet commercialization starts, it is time to start making efforts! What's going on with the Navigator browser? "

Most domestic netizens in another time and space have never heard of the Navigator browser. In fact, before Microsoft's IE browser was not bundled with the system for free, Navigator's share in the US browser market once exceeded 90%.

Although Microsoft suppressed Netscape and its "navigators" through unfair competition. But it was also targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice and was almost split in the Great Trial of the Century. After the death of "Navigator", there is actually a trace of blood passed down. Later, the Firefox browser with many users is actually the follow-up open source version of "Navigator".

In fact, Microsoft's ie browser and navigator also have some origins. Both competitors were actually developed by the same person. The supercomputer center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosts one of the world's first World Wide Web services.

So a student named Mark Anderson was working part-time at the supercomputer center. It was decided to design a graphical browser for the World Wide Web to facilitate retrieval of information on the World Wide Web server in the computer center.

So he set up a development team with the consent of his supervisor and wrote a graphical browser called "Mosaic". The intellectual property rights for the browser naturally belonged to the Supercomputing Center at the University of Champaign, which later sold it to a commercial company.

And Mark Anderson, after graduating from the University of Champaign, went to Silicon Valley for a job. Later, at the instigation of Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, the two co-founded Netscape. The Navigator browser developed by Netscape became popular overnight, and Bill Gates reacted.

But although Microsoft is a software empire, it is actually very model for the Internet field. In order to improve the development progress, Microsoft simply bought the "Mosaic" browser intellectual property from the hands of the company. Bought "Mosaic" from another hand, and developed ie browser on this basis.

However, because of the emergence of the butterfly Li Xuan, Bill Gates' Microsoft empire has been impossible to appear, and naturally it is impossible to have that browser war in another time and space.

Therefore, after the World Wide Web Technology Group of the Oriental Research Institute developed the 1.0 version of the graphical browser, Li Xuan simply named it "Navigator". This is a tribute to the great but short-lived Netscape in another time and space!

If the operating system is the link between people and computers, then the browser is the link between computers and the Internet. I have control of the browser market, whoever controls the keys to the Internet world. It is precisely because of such a crucial position of the browser that Bill Gates and Microsoft in another time and space reacted, and would desperately promote their IE browser.

Li Xuan's original plan was to set up a brand-new software company based on the ie browser. When the time is ripe, let Dongfang System Software Company come forward to acquire this new company, thereby increasing the shareholding ratio of Dongfang Group in Dongfang System Software Company.

The personal computer operating system is in the transition from the era to the graphical era. The fact that the Oriental system software can dominate the world in the previous era does not mean that it can smoothly extend its dominance to the graphical era.

Therefore, in order to gain the widest support from computer manufacturers, Dongfang System Software has successively introduced a number of companies with the highest computer sales as their new shareholders. The shareholding ratio of Dongfang Group in Dongfang System Software Company has also dropped to only 37.5%.

And Dongfang System Software Company has already started the action. After it issues some new shares and completes the listing, the shareholding ratio of Dongfang Group can only be maintained at about 30% at most. This will naturally greatly weaken Li Xuan's control over Dongfang System Software Company.

Now that most of the other shareholders are new entrants, it is naturally impossible to jump out in such a hurry to challenge Dongfang Group's control over Dongfang System Software Company. But with the passage of time, like ibm, which holds shares second only to the Oriental Group, it is likely to make some small moves secretly.

In another time and space, almost all computer makers around the world work for Microsoft and Intel. And the same situation in this life is certainly unavoidable. As the competition in the computer industry becomes more and more fierce, the profits of hardware manufacturers will become thinner and thinner.

Only operating systems and processors in a monopoly position can still reap huge profits. The Oriental Research Institute is Li Xuan's spasm and has never been prepared to introduce external capital. So when the time comes, the Eastern System Software Company will become the focus of everyone's competition!

Before selling computers became unprofitable, UU read www. It is necessary for uukanshu.com to restore his shareholding in Dongfang System Software Company! The browser is undoubtedly the first killer application of the future Internet era. But just relying on the value of a browser, it is far from enough to be comparable to the current Oriental System Software Company!

According to Wall Street's valuation of Eastern System Software, it is likely to become a giant company with a market value of more than $10 billion when it goes public. If Li Xuan wants to increase his stake by 10%, that means he needs to inject an asset of $1.1 billion. It is simply impossible for a browser to show a value of more than $1 billion in the short term.

Therefore, Li Xuan decided to put the "Navigator" browser under the company's banner first, and then put the entire company into Dongfang System Software Co., Ltd. in the future! (To be continued.)

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