Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

The publicity period before Bing's listing silenced the news of Bing's listing for a time, but the reason why the hot spot is unknown is because it has enough to catch people's attention.

Just like Wall Street, this is a place that focuses on money and value.

What media audiences here generally pay attention to is often the investment value of a company.

Therefore, in the past two days, a Wall Street media report titled "Bing went public, the fastest Internet company to reach a market capitalization of 100 billion" has once again pushed Bing to the forefront.

This report provides a well-founded analysis of why Bing has a market capitalization of US$100 billion. Although the data it comes from is more based on the placement of big brands on the Bing advertising platform, the total in the Q2 quarter of 2008 was US$15 billion.

The business income of US dollars shows the vicious vision and cunning methods of the article publisher.

You should know that Bing is not a listed company and has never made public financial reports. Bing also has its own financial team and never consults third parties.

But the world never lacks smart people, and smart people often have their own solutions when faced with problems.

Bing does not disclose its financial reports, but the financial reports of major brands where Bing advertises include the share of Internet media advertising.

As long as based on this advertising share, supplemented by Bing's 55% share of the international search market, we can infer the advertising promotion expenses of major companies on Bing.

Then based on the traditional 2,8 principle, Bing's advertising revenue is derived based on the advertising promotion expenses of the top 10 listed companies.

Based on the general expectation that the Q3 and Q4 quarters of general companies will exceed expectations in the first half of the year, the author infers that Bing's revenue for the entire year of 2008 is likely to exceed 30 billion.

At the same time, since Bing belongs to the asset-light high-tech industry, the author's net profit of 35% pushed Bing's estimated net profit for 2008 to US$10 billion.

The audience of Wall Street media are all elites who follow the laws of data. As soon as this report came out, many people who had not paid attention to Bing naturally became interested in Bing.

Because according to the rules of the capital market, as long as Bing's estimated revenue of 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2008 is not false, its stock price will gain at least 20% appreciation after its listing. And if Bing's net profit in 2008 exceeds 10 billion, Bing's stock price will increase after listing.

The valuation may even exceed 40%!

At least 20%, higher than 40%!

Conservative estimates suggest that Bing's market value will increase to US$120 billion on the day of listing.

And at a higher tone, its market value will be as high as 140 billion US dollars!

For a time, people became more and more curious about Bing, which has not yet announced its major shareholder.

At the same time, people are thinking more about how to turn such added value into their own interests.

Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and even people who knew the news about Bing's listing secretly made up their minds that before the day Bing goes public, they must try their best to find opportunities to buy as many Bing stocks as possible!

They hope that Bing will invest as much stock as possible in the circulating market. After all, if there are 25% of the circulating shares, they and others are likely to get a piece of it.

As soon as this article came out, a large group of people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street were eager to get involved. However, while they were so excited, they seemed to have forgotten one important thing.

The Skype acquisition, which was very popular some time ago, was thrown aside like a piece of chicken ribs.

In fact, just as Bing's listing is becoming more and more popular, another hot topic with front-end time comparable to Bing - the Skype acquisition, has advanced two rounds of negotiations in recent times.

During the period when people were eyeing Bing, many changes occurred in the acquisition negotiation process of Skype's US headquarters in San Jose.

There seemed to be some ambiguities in the acquisition opinions between the Rothschild consortium and eBay, but in fact, these ambiguities were directed at the final transaction price.

At this time, Rothschild, who originally wanted to follow Ning Zimo in negotiating the acquisition of Skype within a month, gradually discovered.

Although they had made adequate preparations half a month ago to face the new problems arising from the Skype acquisition, the development in the past half month did not end as he expected.

Rothschild was sitting on pins and needles as the chief negotiator. This feeling of being unable to be controlled made him extremely uncomfortable.

In the past few years, when he was hiding in the shadows, the moment he stood in front of the stage, he was always the one who pointed the way.

With just a few million, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, he can often win himself an opportunity to gain the highest benefits.

But today, Ebay is not such an opponent. They hold Skype, which he is optimistic about, and they will not be able to win it as easily as before.

Because the capital market behind them has pushed eBay's stock price to a market value of hundreds of billions, they would look at Skype's transaction worth more than $5 billion with some disdain.

Especially the soon-to-retire CEO Meg Whitman, who said she wanted to gain dignity for her departure from eBay.

But when she was sitting here, she was still standing on the higher step, pinching him condescendingly.

This kind of scrutiny made him quite unhappy, and made him feel more and more that he must gradually become more powerful after acquiring Skype!

one day,

I want to stand at a high enough position,

Sitting on my social empire,

Staring at you from above!

A voice sounded in Rothschild's heart, and seemed to spread along his mind to his chest and then swarmed out of his chest and out of his mouth.

If the person he liked was not sitting at the negotiating table, he almost couldn't restrain his impulse.

After finally restraining his emotions, his fingertips began to tap on the countertop uncontrollably.

This sudden movement was particularly conspicuous in the suddenly quiet negotiation room, and the attention of everyone around him was immediately directed towards him.

Feeling the attention from all around, Rothschild pretended to be relaxed and raised his eyelids.

The person sitting opposite him was none other than Meg Whitman. After changing her strategy in the past two weeks, she had already seen that the young man opposite him was gradually losing his composure.

When those careless and perfunctory expressions appear, Meg Whitman's mind will always think of the same face that took the second seat at the negotiating table in 2002 and the main seat at the negotiating table in 2004.

It stands to reason that the dignity of the British aristocracy should be the temperament engraved in the bones of the person opposite. But compared with the usually calm young man, the rich kid from the four major families in front of him has simply wasted his family background.

.

Especially the subtle movements of raising his eyelids increasingly revealed his impatience.

Meg Whitman glanced at him and waited silently for his speech.

Anyway, at the end, someone will appear to make the final speech.

As expected, after this glance, the person opposite finally lost his composure:

"Ms. Whitman, eBay has gone through 13 years of development since its establishment in 2005. I believe that you have been deeply involved in the field of e-commerce for a long time and have a lot of experience.

It has been 4 years since Skype was acquired in 2004. In the past four years, eBay has not demonstrated the combination of e-commerce and social networks you mentioned."

Although there have been many changes recently, Rothschild gradually focused his attention as soon as he opened his mouth and quickly sorted out an idea that was beneficial to him.

"There is only one reason why eBay has not been able to do anything in the past four years. That is the genes corresponding to each company, which determines their investment in certain areas."

Rothschild glanced at the two heads of Skype, CEO Niklas and COO Fries, who were sitting opposite eBay's second negotiating table.

Although he was very disdainful of the role these two people played in the development of Skype, he still had to rely on their "unsuccess".

"Just like Skype, under the leadership of two main leaders, Skype, which did not enter the e-commerce field, has developed rapidly. But since it was acquired by eBay, the genes transplanted from eBay have obviously restricted the continued development of Skype.

.”

Sweeping his hand in the air, Rothschild ignored the blushing embarrassment of the two people opposite him:

"Skype started in Europe. As a social software, it should have excellent social management. But since its headquarters moved to the United States, it has been restricted by eBay's e-commerce genes and the strong endorsement behind it - eBay.

The development of Skype has led to the development of Skype in the past four years not meeting expectations."

Meet expectations?

Rothschild knew very well that the words he used were mere rhetoric, just to save some face for the current leadership teams of eBay and Skype.

As an instant messaging software that became world-famous in 2004, Skype has developed into what it is today after four years of development. If it didn't have many users with social attributes, he wouldn't even consider getting involved with it.

However, this experience about Skype's failure was not his focus at all.

But this point has now become an important link for him to unify his thinking and lower prices.

"Ms. Whitman, I have been to China. There is an old saying in China that 'a teacher who never forgets the past is the teacher of the future.' In other words, Skype's development after being injected with eBay genes should give us a clear

ideas.

I believe we all understand this truth, so do you think that eBay still insists on selling part of its shares as a plan that is beneficial to us? And if we only hold part of Skype shares, will it be conducive to building our MySpace social ecosystem?"

Looking at the thoughtful Meg Whitman, Rothschild did not leave any time for her to react.

"I am convinced that the acquisition of Skype must be a wholly-owned acquisition by our consortium. In other words, Skype must be separated from eBay in order to develop healthily within our team, which is good at operating social networks.

In the past, we have wasted too much time on this topic. So today, we will negotiate on the premise that it is conducive to the development of Skype, and we can also leave some foreshadowing in future cooperation between social networks and e-commerce."

Seeing that Meg Whitman seemed interested, Rothschild said proudly:

"Ms. Whitman, I can increase the purchase price of Skype to 5.25 billion, which is a 5% increase from our initial offer. At the same time, we can sign an e-commerce and social network cooperation agreement after the deal is established.

Strategic cooperation agreement.

In other words, Skype is fully acquired by us, and eBay, as a giant in the e-commerce field, will become our first choice for Skype in the field of e-commerce cooperation."

As he approached step by step, Rothschild sat forward a little further.

This small distance made him feel that he had won more space in this dispute.

But what Rothschild didn't expect was that Meg Whitman, who had been very interested just now, frowned.

For a moment, Rothschild had a premonition that something was wrong.

Is it possible that the purchase price with a 5% price increase is not satisfactory?

For a moment, he suddenly couldn't understand what the person opposite was planning.

He calmed down and prepared to remain unchanged in the face of any changes.

Just like that, the negotiation suddenly became silent again.

And the icy atmosphere gave him a burning and extremely uncomfortable feeling in his chest.

It seemed like a long time before Rothschild saw Meg Whitman on the opposite side and opened her mouth.

"Mr. Rothschild, the negotiations have been going on for a month and a half. I believe we have enough understanding of your sincerity. And we also understand the existence of some of the problems you just mentioned, and we extremely recognize this existence."

Meg Whitman smiled slightly, but her frown and slightly embarrassed expression gave Rothschild a bad premonition.

"It's just, Mr. Rothschild." Meg Whitman said sarcastically, "After these two weeks of negotiations, we feel more and more that the plan you just mentioned is feasible and is conducive to dual development.

.However, in terms of price, we received an offer this morning that we cannot ignore."

Meg Whitman looked apologetic. This seemingly "humble" look coupled with her words made Rothschild sneer in his heart.

After 45 days of negotiations, eBay suddenly received an offer that could not be ignored!

But the problem is that the team he sent out to track Meg Whitman didn't have any news about her contact with anyone else.

He knew that this must be the reason why Meg Whitman was dissatisfied with the price and asked for a price increase.

But this also shows that the other party does not refuse to sell Skype as a whole.

The previous month and a half of pulling was just the other party’s early price increase strategy!

snort…

After all, this old woman still has some tricks up her sleeve.

It's just that she doesn't know it at all, and her method seems a bit low-level.

Thinking of this, Rothschild glanced at Ling Shengnan beside him, with a hint of pride on his lips.

But he found that Ling Shengnan's gaze seemed to be filled with some worry that he had never seen before.

Seeing the meaning in her eyes, Rothschild nodded slightly and smiled easily.

Pretending to be too much, he told Meg Whitman, "Ms. Whitman, I understand that you are not satisfied with Skype's offer, but the value of Skype to the owner is like this..."

"No, sir."

Whitman interrupted Rothschild's pride. She said calmly, "During the lunch break, a distinguished guest came to our eBay company. However, he didn't seem to know that I was not in the company. So, he just came

On the way here, he sent me a message."

Raising the iPhone Zero in her hand, Meg Whitman said apologetically, “Because the board of directors also attaches great importance to this gentleman, so his purchase price is higher than yours, so we were informed by the board of directors before we did.

Now, this offer has been submitted to the senior board of directors. And the reason why I am sitting here is to give the board of directors a satisfactory answer."

!!!

After all calculations, Rothschild never expected that a sudden offer would be presented to eBay's board of directors.

Such an incident left him too late to react. Finally, he naturally turned his attention to Winston beside him.

Before they exchanged anything in detail, the two heard a voice from the other side.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rothschild. Because of the intervention of the board of directors, we have to consider the price issue. Although today's topic can follow your idea just now, the price is something we need to renegotiate."

Regardless of whether this news is true or not, the two people interpreted that the other party was not satisfied with the US$5.25 billion acquisition price.

But apart from price, is there really such a competitor?

If it exists, who will that competitor be?

Reading similar questions from Winston's eyes, Rothschild turned his head again.

Well, before he spoke, Meg Whitman spoke first:

"The buyer said that he is used to not wasting time. Therefore, if there are already competitors, if you are willing, he is willing to use a secret bidding method to decide the ownership of Skype at once."

!!!

Rothschild felt the tremor around him, and when he turned around, he saw Winston staring at him with wide eyes.

They all remember the details of what happened when MySpace was acquired, and the way they were able to acquire MySpace was through secret bidding.

The person who created that technique is the person who in a sense led them to where they are today.

But no matter what, they didn't expect it.

The opponent I once thought would never come, actually suddenly appears here?

While they were stunned, they didn't even notice.

Ling Shengnan, who was sitting on the other side, seemed to realize something.

And mist had already risen in her eyes.