Chapter 538

Monopoly itself is not wrong. Patent protection is a kind of monopoly protection.

Most of the anti-monopoly laws in the world are aimed at preventing monopoly enterprises from taking advantage of their own technology market to suppress their competitors. In other words, monopoly is right. It is wrong to use monopoly advantage to suppress competitors.

However, in the actual implementation process, the standard of monopoly is always difficult to determine.

Due to the fuzzy definition standard, antitrust has become a tool for political and economic game among enterprises, capital and even countries.

Igritte, or the whole westero system, has created a new Internet era ahead of time through the layout of the whole industry chain of World Wide Web technology.

In order to achieve this goal, Cisco, AOL and igritte have invested billions of dollars in the past few years. It is reasonable to say that with such a huge initial investment, the westrow system can enjoy the benefits brought by the Internet industry with ease.

The problem now is that the interests involved in the Internet industry are too huge. It's so huge that the westero system can't eat it alone, and many people won't allow the westero system to enjoy this huge cake alone.

The three core executives of igritte, even Tim Berners Lee, who focuses on technology research and development and is not worldly savvy, are aware of the problems when he sees the company's 1992 financial report.

With many memories of two generations, Simon is more clear about the situation that igritte will face.

In the 1990s, Microsoft was tossed to death by the anti-monopoly Department of the United States. To a large extent, it was not the monopoly of Microsoft's operating system, but several Microsoft shareholders, such as Damen, who held too many shares in Microsoft.

When Bill Gates, Paul Allen and others continue to reduce their holdings, Microsoft has gradually become a public holding company integrated with the U.S. economy, and this operating system giant has never encountered a large-scale anti-monopoly investigation.

After the earnings meeting in the morning, Simon discussed with Tim Berners Lee, Jeff Bezos and Carol Bartz in the afternoon about how to solve the situation that igritte will face.

Microsoft's competitors are apple, Intel's competitors are AMD, and IBM's competitors are sun. For igrit, the problem now is that this new technology company, which has created a new Internet era ahead of time, does not even have a decent competitor.

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

However, even if the network businesses of Microsoft and AOL go online and compete with igritte, 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 that the collusion between affiliated enterprises to control the market is also a monopoly.

Igrit has released a large number of World Wide Web patents for free, and it is impossible to further release the core patents held by igrit in the near future.

Without competitors, 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 igrit in the short term in terms of network business, let alone create a competitor from scratch.

Then, there are only two ways to avoid the possible anti-monopoly pressure on igrit. One is to split igrit's major businesses into several different companies according to Simon's original idea. The other is to carry out external financing or IPO as soon as possible to give up enough equity shares to the capital of all parties.

The first way, after all, is to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause.

Second, the most thorough solution is to sell shares and integrate igritte into the whole American economy.

In fact, Simon has made such plans for a long time. For Cisco, AOL, igritte and other companies, he only hopes to retain about 30% of the shares after continuous reduction.

Considering the terrible market value of these enterprises in the future, 30% shareholding is still a huge wealth.

When the small meeting of several core management is over, the preliminary plan has been finalized.

Igritte will conduct its first external financing. It is expected to sell 10% of its shares and raise 1.5 billion US dollars.

According to the company's revenue scale of nearly 2 billion US dollars in 1992 and its high growth rate of nearly 400%, if it goes public, the company's market value is absolutely comparable to that of Cisco and AOL.

Therefore, the valuation of $15 billion is still very conservative for igrit.

As long as we know a little bit about igritte's position in the emerging Internet field and its financial data in 1992, we should know that 10% of the shares and $1.5 billion offer are very cost-effective.

If someone thinks that igritte is opening its mouth to the lion, then it is obvious that the other party is not a worthy partner.Although the offer is as high as US $1.5 billion, the 10% shares can't be bought by anyone who wants to buy them. If they are Arab local tyrants or Japanese chaebols, I'm sorry, let's cool off.

This part of the equity will only be sold to the capital power in the United States, which has a decisive influence on the federal politics and economy, so as to provide assistance when igritte encounters anti-monopoly and other pressures.

People are always greedy.

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

Igritte will also launch its IPO plan as soon as possible.

Taking into account the equity incentives promised to Tim Berners Lee and other senior executives, as well as the option incentives of many employees, westero's shareholding in igrit will rapidly drop to less than 70% in the next few years.

San Francisco, Palo Alto.

At the headquarters of igritte company, when the financing plan was finalized, Tim Berners Lee thought more about their share incentive plan.

According to the original agreement, the five-year contract, they can each get a maximum of 5% of the company's equity award.

With the current development momentum of igritte, unless Simon reneges and tears up the contract, 5% of the equity is basically certain.

Then, even according to the $15 billion valuation of this financing, the 5% equity will be worth $750 million.

750 million dollars.

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

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

So, for the rest of the afternoon, Simon could clearly feel that when Jeff Bezos explained to himself the igritte advertising alliance plan that igritte was about to launch, his tone was obviously a little high.

No one can predict their own future.

The current $750 million has satisfied the descendants of this Cuban immigrant from the bottom.

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

Of course, if is always just if.

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

In another conference room of igritte headquarters, Jeff Bezos finished explaining the technical details of the advertising alliance plan and began to introduce the specific implementation plan.

The advertising alliance plan is naturally made by Simon according to the advertising alliance plans of the major Internet giants in his memory.

When it was first proposed, not every senior manager of igrit agreed with the plan. Many people thought that the advertising alliance plan might lead to a large number of competitors of igrit. Therefore, compared with the advertising alliance plan, igrit should focus more on its expansion in the content field.

At the present stage, the news information, network forum, micro blog, e-mail and other businesses of igrit portal are developing rapidly, which also provides enough rich content support for the advertising business of igrit portal. Because of the company's strong position in the content field, some management inevitably think that igritte alone is enough to support the content supply of the whole Internet.

This obviously goes against Simon's original positioning of igritte.

In Simon's plan, igritte will be a high-tech company focusing on creating Internet platform, and will never become an Internet media company focusing on producing content.

With the popularity of the Internet, hundreds of millions of Internet users' differentiated demand for online content is not what an Internet media company can provide.

Through the search engine, micro blog and network forum services, to provide a content display platform for Internet users, so that more content providers and Internet users can produce their own content, is the survival way of igrit company.

In the Internet 1.0 era, Yahoo, AOL and other Internet media companies competed to occupy the land. As a result, they seemed to be prosperous, but they all declined rapidly after the Internet 2.0 era.

The current igritte portal is just an excess for igritte.

The Google search engine and Facebook microblog that igritte has started to operate independently, as well as the Amazon online mall that has emerged rapidly in the past year, are the foundation for igritte to become an Internet superpower in the future.

However, Simon will not publicize this fundamental development strategy everywhere.

There are only a few core managers in igrit company who know his specific ideas clearly. Therefore, it is inevitable that there are many different voices in the process of carrying out the advertising alliance plan.With the absolute control of igritte, Simon will not be interfered by such objections, but will undoubtedly ask the management to implement the plan. He knows Simon's long-term plan for igritte, and Jeff Bezos and others also support the plan.

Through the igritte advertising alliance plan, many websites that can't independently carry out commercial business also have a clear profit channel, which can accelerate the development of the Internet. Only when the content of the Internet field is more abundant can igrit's businesses develop faster, which is actually a mutually beneficial relationship.

It's four o'clock in the afternoon to finish the work schedule of igritte.

Simon's day's work is not over yet. He leaves the headquarters of igritte company and goes to tingcobail company founded by C Girl CLAIRE Gaines.

According to Simon's idea, tincobail has recently developed and completed the prototype of the first digital music player. While there was still some time left, Simon was going to see it for himself.

Not far away from igritt's tingcobail headquarters, C girl and her other partner, Neil Brantley, are already waiting for Simon. In addition, they also see the petite little Jennifer Bree behind C girl.

Having said hello to girl c, Simon could not help rubbing his hand on the girl's head and said with a smile, "don't you need class today?"

I can't help it. The little girl is only as tall as Simon's chest. It's really suitable for rubbing her head.

Instead of resisting Simon's action, Jennifer shrunk her neck delicately. Her eyes with long eyelashes narrowed slightly, like a cat being touched by her owner. She did not forget to respond to Simon: "there is no class in the afternoon."

Although he knew the girl's age, Simon still had a feeling of teasing minors.

Once again, Claire, Neil Brantley and others are 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. Standing in the crowd is even more strange. It's like someone's parents brought their children to the company at work.

Simon actually understood that little Jeanne was arranged by Janet to enter Stanford University, because at the beginning of the concert, girl C and others naturally regarded her as their own woman, so they "connived".

With a smile, Simon didn't say anything more and went to the office building with everyone.

Jennifer Bree cleverly followed the crowd, her beautiful eyes peering at her.

She had just discovered something.

This time, it turned out to be Alison Norris, a girl who used to be very wary of them. She didn't come with Simon this time.

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

Simon didn't care about little Jennie's mind. He came to a laboratory in the office building and soon saw a prototype of a digital music player that had just been developed.

The machine will be named iPlayer, according to a series of trademarks filed in advance by tincobail.

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

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

The size of this prototype is like the tape Walkman at the present stage, which is far from the standard of match box size in Simon's memory, but it is also the limit of technology at the present stage.

You know, the core storage device of iPlayer player, the 1.5-inch micro hard disk, has the size of a matchbox.

The 1.5-inch, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch standards of mechanical hard disk refer to the size of the disk inside the hard disk. The whole hard disk is often much larger.

In Simon's memory, the 1.5-inch micro hard disk was once as big as a piece of "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 disk is also much larger than Simon's 3.5-inch hard disk.

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

The prototype developed by tincobail uses a micro hard disk that has not been mass produced by IBM, with a capacity of only 20m. According to the MP3 audio format developed by igritte company, the average size of each song is about 3M at a high compression level, and a micro hard disk can only hold six or seven songs, less than a record.

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

Neil Brantley said that as long as the market demand is sufficient, we have accumulated many years of major hard disk manufacturers in technology, and are fully capable of rapidly increasing the capacity of micro hard disk.

In the short term, it only needs one or two hundred megabytes of capacity, which is enough for the current digital player.In terms of storage media, Simon also considered flash memory.

However, due to the development of semiconductor technology and the limited market demand, flash memory chips at this stage usually have a capacity of only a few hundred K.

Compared with mechanical hard disk, flash memory has many advantages in storage stability, reading speed and energy consumption, but because of its small capacity, in the next five to ten years, if we want to develop digital music players, we have to adopt the solution of micro hard disk.