Chapter 611 (1/2)
The progress of cooperation and negotiation between igrit and New York Times Group, the company's response to a series of recent lawsuits, IE browser free plan, buyout to Subscription Scheme of World Wide Web basic tools and software, and the development of key start-ups supported by the venture capital department, etc.
Although he didn't go to San Francisco, Simon spent the whole day in his villa study on Saturday discussing various issues with Silicon Valley.
Simon has been trying to avoid becoming a micromanager, but as igritte's company grows larger and larger, there are more and more things he needs to be involved in making decisions. It's not the distrust of the management, but the fact that the Internet, as an absolute emerging industry, has no precedent to compare. Once it goes in the wrong direction at the early stage of development, it will be more difficult to reverse.
For example, this cooperation with the New York Times Group.
Both Jeff Bezos and Carol Bartz, who is not in charge of the Internet portal department, said that they should refuse to join the New York Times Group's content resources in the news and information field where the company has been able to provide content for users independently. They think that doing so may lead to the diversion of igritte's media discourse in the Internet field by the New York Times Group.
For the most part, it's true that they think so.
The introduction of New York Times Group's news content, and even the guidance of traffic for each other's professional news website, will inevitably lead to many users leaving igrit portal to seek more professional news information. On the surface, it is very unfavorable for igrit portal to control the Internet media.
However, if he refuses to cooperate, can igritte really hold this position for a long time?
Not to mention anything else, just comparing the staff size of the news and information team, the number of about 500 employees in the news and Information Department of igrit portal is less than one third of the 1600 employees of the New York Times.
The backwardness of paper media groups in the field of Internet is by no means that their ability to produce content is not strong. The key is that traditional media should protect their own vested interests.
Once the power of paper media is completely open to digital, igritte portal can't compete with the traditional media in terms of news and information.
Of course, unless faced with a critical moment of life and death, the paper media is unlikely to completely turn to digital for a long time to come. However, even if it's just a part of the effort, if igrit portal refuses to cooperate with it, it will only push a large number of content resources from traditional paper media to the competitors, and eventually it may even make the competitors bigger.
Most importantly, Simon has repeatedly stressed from the beginning of igrit's development that the portal is not the core of igrit.
In the field of network business, igritte needs to protect only three things at all costs: search engine, social network and e-commerce.
Previous executives may not understand that with the continuous popularity of the Internet and more proficient users of Internet surfing, the rapid growth of search engine business is completely visible to the naked eye. After all, after being familiar with the Internet, users will only be more and more inclined to bypass the recommendation of portal websites and directly find the content they are interested in
as for social networks.
When everyone is concentrated in one social circle, it is almost impossible to change another social network environment, so it is difficult for the latecomer to shake the social network that has formed enough scale.
If we master the search engine and social network, we will really master the content interface of the Internet in the future.
At that time, through these two invisible networks, igritte can only see what users want to see. No matter how professional and rich your news content is, if it can't appear in search engines and social networks, or is deliberately hidden in the most humble corner, then everything is in vain.
This is the real indestructible right to speak!
Relatively speaking, it is much easier to copy the portal website.
In the era of Internet 1.0, where portal websites are still crucial at this stage, igritte will push a large number of content resources to its competitors, which is likely to bring opportunities for the other party to transform, leading to igritte being caught up or even surpassed before the foundation of Internet 2.0 model is deeply rooted.
On the contrary, open access to content resources, to a large extent, will also form a stronger Matthew effect.
Not only that, the digital content of traditional media seems to gain more influence in this process, but many paper media want to get traffic import from igrit portal, whether active or passive, must act according to the rules of igrit portal.
The simple truth is that the content inclined to Westeros system is bound to be more easily recommended, and the articles attacking Westeros system will certainly be suppressed. This potential impact will be further transmitted to the traditional paper media platform. As long as a newspaper cooperates with igritte portal, even if it just wants to publish an article on Westeros system on the paper media platform We should also consider whether this will affect the cooperation between the two sides in the field of Internet.
Therefore, the introduction of New York Times Group's content, and even cooperation with more paper media enterprises, will not affect the Internet media influence of igritte, but will increase the right to speak.In addition to content cooperation, the New York Times Group also proposed to take a stake in the online radio website broadcast invested by igritte, and obtain the patent license of online video live broadcasting technology.
Simon agreed to do it all.
Broadcast, the online radio website in my memory, can be regarded as a typical example of the most failed enterprise in the Internet 1.0 era. In that year, Yahoo spent billions of dollars to acquire the website in the stock exchange mode, and only got a mess in the end.
Now that similar projects have been launched, Simon doesn't want to repeat them.
Therefore, in the process of project planning, Simon adopted the ”Himalayan network” mode in his memory. In addition to introducing traditional radio resources, the brand-new broadcast focused on the development of personal radio, audio books, online music, educational courses and other online film reviews.
Compared with the immediacy of traditional radio stations, the broadcast invested by igritte will save a large number of fixed audio resources.
Simon even considered that when iPlayer was launched next year, broadcast could be directly used as the content cooperation platform of this hardware player.
In the short term, it is unrealistic to lobby large record companies to provide music resources to the Internet. However, in addition to music, the rich audio books, educational courses and other types of audio resources provided by broadcast can also promote the promotion of iPlayer digital music player.
Since this broadcast is no longer the same, Simon is reluctant to share this website with the New York Times Group.
Only considering that a large amount of print media content owned by the New York Times group can be converted into audio resources, Simon agreed. However, he only promised to give the other party 15% of the shares at most, and offered a price of US $30 million. As a result, the valuation of broadcast website reached US $200 million.
By contrast, when the project started last year, igritte took an 80% stake in broadcast for just $10 million. Of course, the additional advertising resources and traffic import value given by igritte is not comparable to that of a mere $10 million.
In addition, the online live video technology is mainly because the recent live broadcast of London girls has made the public aware of the possibility that the Internet can replace the television industry.
The traditional paper media has been looking forward to entering the television industry, but it has been restricted by the ”cross media ownership ban” for a long time. The New York Times group saw the possibility of directly crossing the television platform to the Internet video media, so it wanted to occupy the pit ahead of time.
In addition to the demonstration live broadcast, igritte has no plan to create a special video website or live broadcast website in the short term, and will only open a small number of tests just like the trailer of igritte portal film plate.
At this stage, most users' network bandwidth and hardware equipment can not meet the process of watching online video, and the storage and bandwidth consumption of video website is too large. Setting up a professional website can not provide users with the best video experience, and the cost is also very expensive. So if the New York Times group wants it, take it.
I personally made a decision on the cooperation with the New York Times Group. In addition, the free IE browser plan and the buyout and subscription plan of the World Wide Web infrastructure software were also completely determined in today's discussion.
About the free plan of IE browser, after the communication with pre installed hardware manufacturers and telecom operators, ie will officially announce the free plan before May.
Carol Bartz proposed another plan of switching from buyout to subscription for the sales mode of basic tools software on the world wide web. In fact, this matter was discussed just after the birth of several basic software. Simon was inclined to buy out at one time at that time, which was mainly decided by the software sales environment at that time. After all, Microsoft's windows and Oracle's database software were both disposable Buy out.
After a few years, Carol Bartz brought up the issue again, expressing the hope that the buyout will be turned to subscription, so as to obtain more lasting and stable income. On the other hand, it is also out of the consideration of promoting the latest technology of the world wide web as soon as possible.
The Internet has entered an explosive period, and the update speed of World Wide Web technology can be called a flying block.
The software versions purchased by many users may have fallen behind in just one year, so timely updating undoubtedly needs to bear an extra expensive expense. Without updating, many new world wide web technologies cannot be used. From the perspective of igritte, a software developer, it is undoubtedly the best choice to maximize the benefits by continuously promoting users to buy new versions of software. However, everyone is not stupid. It is too easy to be hated.
As a result, there are signs of rampant proliferation of pirated ygritte series basic tool software at this stage.
Many small start-ups, after purchasing a set of genuine software, are unwilling to pay for subsequent updates, so they just turn to piracy quietly. Even if igritte official recourse, you can make up for the old version of the legitimate software, which unknowingly brought great losses to igritte company.
Therefore, switching from buy-out to subscription can not only ensure users to use the latest software at any time, but also avoid one-time expensive expenses. At present, the Internet speed can also support the online real-time update of software. For igrit, this may lead to a significant decline in short-term sales of the software department, but it will bring more long-term stable revenue. At the same time, subscription user registration can also solve the problem of piracy to the greatest extent.Until five o'clock in the afternoon, Janet came to her study, and Simon was still discussing the upcoming ”happy farm” with the head of igritte's online game department.
Just nodded with Simon, Janet sent away a girl who was sorting out a thick pile of information and picked up a copy of it. This is the litigation data of a website named 33list suing igritte advertising alliance for suspected monopoly.
Just looking at the name 33list, Janet couldn't help but curl her lips.