Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

{Time: July 22, 2002}

On the European morning of July 22, 2002, in a room somewhere in Estonia, a man who had not yet gotten up suddenly heard the phone ringing.

Who would call so early in the morning? The man forced himself to get up from the bed and reached for the receiver.

After all, only people who are familiar with your phone number will call you.

If a salesman called so early,

Then, stop doing this business of his!

Putting the receiver to his ear, the man announced his door, "Hi, I'm Niklas, who called me?"

"Nicholas, this is William. I'm sorry that I called you so early, but I am really urgently looking for you."

"William? What's the matter?"

Nicholas was very confused. William was his investor and he was considered a slow-tempered person. Even if it was a very urgent matter, he would rarely use such a hasty tone. Could it be that something more happened in their case?

Serious problem?

"Nicholas, didn't you tell us about an idea about Internet telephony last time? I think you need to get up and take a look right away."

Internet phone?

Nicholas frowned immediately. He had a bad premonition, but he still said calmly, "Yes William, because we always suffer copyright lawsuits on the kazaa project. So I think we need to develop new ones."

project, and Internet telephony is the next product we want to make."

"Okay, Niklas, now someone has implemented your idea! It was posted on the Internet today, and I now need you to make an assessment as to whether we still need to work on this project that has not really started yet.

Invest energy?”

Nicholas was stunned after hearing what was said on the other end of the phone.

"William, what do you mean, do you need to tell me in detail?"

"Nicholas, skrpe, you should search for skrpe right away. The five letters s k r p e can be found using several major search engines. It is an Internet phone software, very similar to the Internet phone you and Fries described to me.

software.

I accidentally saw their paid promotion advertisement on Fengyu this morning, so I tried to download and use it. I really hope you wake up now, because I really want you to turn on your computer, search and download this software. Then we

Maybe you can try it and see how its call quality is."

"Oh my god, William, wait a minute. I'll go online and look for this software you're talking about right away." Niklas's mind was thrown into confusion by the message on the other end of the phone. He forced himself to calm down for a few seconds before getting out of bed.

Get up.

During the long waiting time when he rushed into the study and turned on the computer, Nicholas could even hear the thumping sound of his heart.

For him, the news on William's phone was too shocking. The Internet phone project was an excellent idea that their team came up with after many days of brainstorming.

It was virgin territory, and no one had yet realized their expectations.

Now, unexpectedly, someone has already achieved it one step ahead of them?

How is this possible?

How could anyone have thought of this idea before them?

After entering the system interface, Nicholas couldn't wait to open the browser and type in the URL of the Fengyu search engine.

In the search bar, Niklas first tried to search for voip, and he found that the number one paid advertisement was skrpe.

Once again, he tried voip phone again, and still found that the top-ranked paid advertisement was still skrpe.

Unwilling to be reconciled, Niklas tried to search skrpe directly and typed it in the browser address bar.

All are skrpe, all are skrpe.

Not only Fengyu, there are also mute tigers, and there are also giant hard ones.

In addition to the local search engine in Estonia, skrpe is present in all major search engines in Omi.

After doing this, Niklas was not reconciled and even tried to return to the search engine interface and continued to search for no less than voip Internet phone related search terms. But in the end, skrpe could be seen placing corresponding advertisements.

He viciously clicked on several ad links, but he actually knew very well how weak his counterattack was.

The search engine will definitely help its advertising publishers calculate clearly and avoid those malicious clicks they just made.

So,

his counterattack,

Meaningless.

Niklas was a little frustrated because he had just noticed that forum and skrpe related search results were listed in the related results of different search engines.

He curiously clicked in, and often saw something like "The best contact solution to reduce call charges, skrpe is born!", "skrpe, an instant messaging software that can truly communicate instantly"...

With a series of the same topics, Niklas understood that this was someone deliberately promoting this product. This showed that the initiator of this software not only had the ability to develop software, but also had a series of business operations.

This team,

Not simple.

Nicholas let out a long sigh, stopped for a long time, and finally decided to enter the website to take a look.

He wanted to see if the team that was one step ahead of them, in addition to commercial operations, really made this product perfect.

If not, their business operations actually leave them with the opportunity to counterattack!

Opening the skrpe website, the simple website interface, clear navigation bar and color differences guided him to move the mouse to the download bar involuntarily.

Nicholas also discovered an important problem on the download page. This turned out to be a full-platform software that can run on win systems, mac os systems, and linux systems. At the same time, it turned out to be available in English, French, German,

Italian, five major Spanish language versions.

Nicholas was stunned, but on the other end of the phone between his chin and shoulder, he could vaguely hear some gasping sounds. Only then did he remember that William was waiting for him on the other end of the phone.

So, helplessly, he finally downloaded this software called skrpe, and then followed William's prompts on the other end of the phone to add him as a friend.

Then, he tried to dial William's skrpe number using skrpe. Finally, when William's voice came clearly from his earphones, Niklas finally couldn't hold on anymore.

Nicholas slumped on the back of the chair and said helplessly to the other end of the phone. "William, you saw it too. I found the skrpe you mentioned, not only through its domain name, but also through search.

The engine found it in the advertising space. What makes me most helpless is that through the receiver, I hear your voice almost more real than a landline phone."

The person on the other end of the phone felt that Nicholas was helpless, and after a long time he said with relief, "Man, maybe we can follow his ideas..."

Before William could finish his words of comfort, Nicholas shook his head here.

Although William couldn't see his movements through the phone, he still shook his head and said, "William, thank you for your trust. We have a very happy cooperation on the kazaa project. As the person in charge, I want to invest in you."

Responsible.

Now, we are using this skrpe to make calls. In terms of the main function of voice calls, we as listeners are impeccable. Not to mention that I just searched for keywords and found that they are in marketing

Already have a layout.

Not to mention multi-client versions, multi-language versions and other actions, if coupled with their overwhelming marketing strategies, we just started to do the initial idea. By the time our software was launched a few months later, in fact, we no longer had enough with them.

competitiveness.”

Nicholas was helpless, but he had to tell his investors everything he knew.

William has a very good cooperative relationship with them. Since he can't assess the competition, he can't let William take risks.

There was no sound on the other end of the phone for a while, and it took Niklas a long time before he heard a sigh from the other end.

"Hey~~Forget it, Niklas, if you really think that we can't compete with it, then you can step back and think about it. At least we still have kazaa. You, a creative guy, don't have to worry about this city or place.

.When you have the next great idea, let’s move faster.”

Nicholas could hear William's helplessness, but there was nothing he could do.

After all, this skrpe software is much more advanced than the voip Internet phone software they expected.

During the call just now, he could already feel that the sound quality was no less than that of a phone call. Therefore, after all calculations, even if they launched their voip software earlier, they would still not be able to compete with skrpe.

"Okay, good-bye, old friend."

"Bye, man."

Toot toot…

After hanging up skrpe, Niklas looked at the skrpe website interface again.

He recalled carefully, it seemed that he had just experienced extremely smooth download speed during the download process, and it was obvious that the other party must have used p2p download technology.

After the download is completed, the simple installation steps can be completed in just one step, and then you will reach the login interface when you open it.

Obviously, the development team of this software is not only optimistic about the prospects of this market, but also puts a lot of effort into the user experience. At the same time, they have also put a lot of effort into the official website, and even have a forum and a blog.

The login interface of the software provides a very eye-catching registration button. When you click to register, you only need to simply fill in your email and set the password of the software to get an account, and then directly enter the software interface.

The entire registration process seemed so simple that a fool could complete it alone, so much so that he doubted that he would receive a registration reminder email at all. But when he opened his mailbox with suspicion, he found that there was an email from

It even includes some brief instructions for use.

Niklas suddenly smiled bitterly. Based on his experience with this software just now, this skrpe software is so simple that he can get started quickly without reading any instructions.

Niklas couldn't help but admire the detailed settings of this software interaction designer. That person must be familiar with human nature to design such a simple and easy-to-use software.

Thinking about it now, although I am very reluctant to do so, rejecting William to participate in the competition in the voip market was definitely the most correct decision.

This software is called skrpe. First of all, there are no problems in using the software, and the website is very simple and clear. The most important thing is that the company behind this software obviously has great financial resources and determination. They seem to have invested a lot in search engine advertising.

Less money.

If he and his team followed irresponsibly, William's investment would definitely be wasted.

Sitting in front of the computer, Nicholas shook his head gently after calming down.

He felt helpless. This software called skrpe was indeed similar to the software he expected, but he did it better.

Nicholas took a deep breath and spit it out again after a long time.

There is no way, this is the way this new era of the Internet is. You can create a new world with an idea, but as long as you are one step behind others, you will definitely miss the best opportunity.

Nicholas stood up and walked straight to the bedroom without turning off the computer.

It's dawn, it's a new day, and I don't know what creative ideas will come up today.

But it’s always better,

With an opponent I thought I couldn't compete with from the beginning,

Why don't you just go head-to-head and compete foolishly?