Global Monopoly of Technology

Company lounge.

Luo Sheng and Xu Yong and others from the company sat around and chatted, not necessarily talking about specific agendas, but simply chatting, exchanging ideas, colliding with inspiration, and maybe sparks could be collided.

This culture has been passed down from the company's studio era to the present, and will continue to be passed down. It has also become a manifestation of Bluestar's engineer culture. Basically, there will be half an hour to forty-five minutes of communication time every day.

Every company has its own unique corporate culture.

For example, Google's one-fifth of the free time, Google allows its engineers to spend 20% of their time on their favorite projects, which is equivalent to one day a week, and this approach also makes Google successful 20% of free time for 120% of performance.

Google's approach, in fact, is similar to the "departmental company system" formulated by Qin Weimu, so that the fertilizer does not flow into the fields of outsiders.

In addition to the "chat stream", Bluestar's corporate culture has another unique corporate culture - food.

In Bluestar Technology, it is no longer a matter of free food and drinks in the kitchen, in addition to providing a variety of healthy and delicious snacks for employees to enjoy for free.

In this world where everyone is a foodie, you can eat so many delicious snacks even during work, which can satisfy your appetite and relieve work stress without worrying about unhealthy eating.

Because the company also invited professional health care personnel to carry out matching and food security inspections, the company did not skimp on the money, and everything was for employees to eat healthy food as the core starting point.

It's just that investors are a little distressed when they see it...

Bluestar Technology spends more than five times more than other companies of the same level in food procurement. It can be seen that food culture is a unique trick in North America. Many employees, Luo Sheng failed to catch them with high salaries. but accidentally grabbed their stomachs with Chinese food, then grabbed their hearts, and finally grabbed their people.

The company has specially hired top chef classes from high salaries in China to go to the Menlo Park branch in California. The eight major cuisines can be eaten every day without any repetition of Sichuan cuisine. It is no exaggeration to say that three hundred and sixty-five days a year , it can be done every day without the same pattern.

So that after the news spread, engineers from other technology companies in Silicon Valley came to Menlo Park to eat and drink. Even because of the company's food culture, it still attracted many excellent Silicon Valley engineers.

The engineers of other technology companies were automatically rubbed over, and the "betrayal" for the sake of food became a favorite anecdote.

Silicon Valley is just a general term, and it is not strictly speaking that Menlo Park is also a part of Silicon Valley.

At this point, even Luo Sheng did not think that the North American film director of Bluestar Technology is actually the most famous in Silicon Valley for the company's canteen...

It can only be said that foodies have no borders.

At this moment, in the company's lounge, everyone was chatting while eating snacks.

"The boss's trip to North America, after the copyright cooperation agreement reached with several major record companies was returned to China, shocked countless people's attention." Feng Yi changed his words and added: "But most of the comments seem to be wrong. We see that adults have a lot of stupid money, and they are ridiculed by people in the industry. After spending hundreds of millions to buy copyright, there is nowhere to spend a lot of money."

Indeed, after the news came back to China, it also surprised many people. In addition to lamenting that Bluestar Technology has money and spending money, they laughed at it.

Many people simply do not understand, what is the point of Luo Sheng spending this money?

The domestic version of the online music player is called [Bluestar Music]. When it was launched, the propaganda slogan was that 2.25 million popular songs at home and abroad are licensed, free to listen to, free to download...

It was supposed to be free!

Could it be that you want to pay for it?

This is the real picture of the moment.

Originally, people in the industry thought that Bluestar Music would charge for the copyright after spending a lot of money, but it was still free.

Immediately, I felt that Luo Sheng spent money foolishly, but people were not fooled by it. If they really had to charge, Bluestar Music was absolutely certain to die in China. You must know that Baidu mp3 music search is currently dominating the charts.

"We seem to lose in the present, but we will win the future." Luo Sheng said with a smile, and then shrugged indifferently.

He can't wait to be laughed at like this, so he makes a fortune in a low voice. At that time, one piece of copyright can easily wipe out all the nets. After more than ten years, it will be liquidated, and the industry peers will also pay no attention to copyright. Problems pay a price.

But it is worth mentioning that the domestic version of [Bluestar Music] is free, but the overseas version of [MusicSpace] is paid. After all, the market environment is different, and there are huge differences between the two.

However, people in the domestic Internet circle couldn't understand Luo Sheng's astronomical copyright fee of 1.64 billion yuan ($199.2 million), and reached a digital copyright cooperation with the world's five major record giants. However, the company paid more attention to Luo Sheng's move.

One is Apple and the other is Microsoft.

In front of Bluestar Technology, there are giant-level existences. Before the burst of the Internet bubble, Microsoft's market value once rushed to 583 billion US dollars, becoming the world's number one at that time. After the bubble burst, it was this year's 2004 technology company. In fact, most of them have not recovered their vitality. Bluestar Technology is just a special example, and Microsoft's market value has almost been cut in half. Now it still has 282 billion US dollars, ranking third in the world.

After Microsoft fell from the altar, General Electric is now the world's most valuable company with $319 billion.

There is another unusual phenomenon that few people care about. At this point in time, the status of global financial companies is rising wildly. Citi, AIG, and Bank of America have been squeezed into the top ten listed companies in the world. It seems that it has been a few years. The financial crisis that followed set the stage.

Another technology giant, Apple, which is eyeing Luo Sheng, only completed the transformation of the salted fish last year. Until 2003 last year, Apple was still a technology company respected by "non-mainstream" users, although the public knows that Apple's products are very Yes, but there are not many people who are willing to pay for it, and "pay the bill" for this kind of appreciation.

Before 2003, Apple's market value slumped all the way down to $4 billion, and Joe Gang returned to the helm of Apple for several years without seeing much improvement.

But all this, from March 2003, that is, one month after the establishment of Bluestar Technology, Apple began to take off.

Jobs launched iTunes, possibly the most revolutionary innovation in Apple's history, and it also propelled the market cap to a wild ride.

The emergence of iTunes has changed everything. This is the big move that Joe has been holding back for five years. With the emergence of iTunes, Apple has been able to enter the music market, not only by selling products to make money, but also by selling music to make money, Since the launch of the iPod, in just three years, the combination of iPod and iTunes has generated nearly $10 billion in revenue for Apple, accounting for almost half of the company's total revenue.

iTunes has been widely supported by users and partners. Because of the existence of iTunes, it can make it easier for more people to download and organize music, which has also greatly promoted the sales of iPod and made this electronic product popular in North America. up.

Those record companies also welcomed the advent of iTunes. Before that, the record companies could not do anything about the flood of pirated music. The Napster website almost made the record companies peel off, but iTunes made them see the possibility of digital music profit. sex.

Of course, the happiest company is Apple, which makes hardware money by selling iPods and music money through iTunes.

In fact, Luo Sheng negotiated copyright cooperation with the five major record companies so smoothly this time. Those record giants also saw that iTunes has a dominant position in the digital music field. The record companies themselves once wanted to operate digital music, but they changed it. The industry found that it was impossible to play in the technology world at all, and the products launched were scolded as dogs by users, so they gave up.

But obviously, the dominance of iTunes in the field of digital music is not good for record companies, so Luo Sheng came to discuss copyright cooperation this time, it was quite smooth, and it was reasonable.

Because from the perspective of the record company, as a music service manufacturer, it has mastered the copyright. [MusicSpace] and [iTunes] will even have more online music store platforms in the future. These platforms must cooperate at high prices in order to compete for digital copyrights. Obviously good for the record companies.

Anyway, I now feel that I am a winner, and Luo Sheng and Jobs are all "middlemen" who earn the difference in a sense. They have built an online platform to combine the digital copyrights of the songs owned by the record company with the online music. of consumer users connected, and then Luo Sheng took 40% of the cut, which was actually more ruthless than Jobs, taking 5% more.

...