The Science Fiction World of Xueba

Half an hour later, Yang Zhiyuan stared dumbfounded at the young Asian who was obviously younger than himself, and asked in confusion, "This classmate, may I ask you to see me and Fei Luo?"

Pang Xuelin nodded, stretched out his hand and said with a smile, "Hi, student Yang. I'm Pang Xuelin, and I'm from mainland China."

"Pang Xuelin, from mainland China?" Yang Zhiyuan frowned and muttered to himself, "I seem to have heard of this name before."

Immediately, Yang Zhiyuan seemed to think of something, looked at Pang Xuelin, and said incredulously: "I see, you are the one who invented Xinghuan CVD and was hailed as the god of small stocks by Xiangjiang media?"

Pang Xuelin blinked and smiled, "Is my fame so big now?"

Yang Zhiyuan shook hands with Pang Xuelin quickly, and said, "Mr. Pang, I saw your news on the Chinese media in San Francisco. I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you just now. By the way, this is my roommate Fei Luo."

Yang Zhiyuan pointed to Fei Luo, and at the same time introduced Pang Xuelin's identity to Fei Luo in English.

Ferro looked at Pang Xuelin in amazement. He obviously didn't expect this eighteen-year-old boy to become a billionaire through self-employment in less than a year.

"Mr. Filo, hello!"

Pang Xuelin also shook hands with Ferro.

"Hello!"

Filo said shyly.

Although he is also the founder of Yahoo, he has an introverted personality and is more responsible for technical work. The management of the company is basically dominated by Jerry Yang.

"Mr. Pang, let's go to Starbucks to talk."

Yang Zhiyuan pointed to the Starbucks coffee shop not far from the library.

"good."

Pang Xuelin nodded.

Soon, the three sat down at Starbucks, and Yang Zhiyuan ordered a cup of coffee for everyone.

Later, Yang Zhiyuan turned his attention to Pang Xuelin, and asked curiously: "Mr. Pang, how did you know about the website that Fei Luo and I created?"

Before Jerry Yang and Ferro wrote a thesis,

I searched a lot of information, compiled it into directories and sub-categories, put it on the Internet, and named it Jerry World Wide Web Guide.

Originally, this was just a whim of the two. Who would have thought that it would soon arouse widespread attention from netizens, and the traffic of the website would also surge accordingly. Netizens put forward many suggestions for improvement on the message board of the website.

It was the first time for Yang Zhiyuan and Filo to feel the magic of the Internet. In the past half a month, they had devoted all their spare time and energy to the Jerry World Wide Web Guide, and they didn't even write papers much. .

However, at this time, the two maintain and update this website, more out of personal interests and the novelty of Internet communication, and they have not realized the great significance that this website will trigger.

Moreover, it wasn't long before Jerry's World Wide Web Guide came out, and not many people even in the school knew that he and Ferro had created this website. How did this Pang Xuelin know about it?

Pang Xuelin was already prepared for this question, and smiled: "I checked the IP of your website, and it turned out that it was in Stanford, and then I followed the clues to find it, and checked the information of this IP at the student office, and found that it was you You and Filo are in management, so I asked for your contact information by the way..."

Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo looked at each other, and both saw surprise in each other's eyes.

Although there have been traces of hacker activities in this era, Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo were still somewhat surprised by Pang Xuelin's understatement that he had located their location.

After pondering for a moment, Yang Zhiyuan asked curiously, "Mr. Pang, what is the purpose of your inviting us here today?"

Pang Xuelin looked at Jerry Yang with a smile, and said: "I am very optimistic about the information supply model of your Jerry World Wide Web Guide. I am going to create a similar company and would like to invite you to join."

"Invite us to join?"

Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo looked at each other in disbelief.

"Mr. Pang, do you really think this website can make money?"

Pang Xuelin smiled and said, "Student Yang. Do you know how many personal computers there are in the United States now?"

Yang Zhiyuan shook his head.

Pang Xuelin stretched out a finger and said: "There are more than 15 million units, and at least 80% of them are connected to the Internet. Our company has done research on the US consumer electronics market. In one year, Americans spent a total of 9 billion U.S. dollars to purchase about 7 million home computers, which accounted for more than 40% of the computers sold in the United States throughout the year. Among consumer electronics products, the No. 2 in sales after color TVs. We can almost certainly say that PCs will continue to grow strongly at least 20% to 30% per year this year, next year, and well into 2000. We don't have to worry about it , the personal computer will become a fashionable decoration, everyone can find the functions they need in the computer, children's education and entertainment platform, parents' various financial management tools, various word processing jobs. And most importantly, the Internet Information acquisition port. People can receive and transmit various digital products and service platforms through personal computers, such as online e-magazines, interactive games, home shopping functions, and virtual classrooms. In the future, various services such as audio audition and communication media will be It will be integrated into computers, even personal computers, and will become a home entertainment center and a universal terminal in the information age..."

Pang Xuelin paused, and continued: "However, for most netizens who have not experienced online education, they often have no way to start when faced with the vast Internet. Even some Internet enthusiasts can only use chat rooms. Or BBS, for information sharing. There are also companies that are doing a model similar to yours. By collecting information comprehensively and compiling it into different directory models, the efficiency of information sharing is improved. I personally think that these models are quite immature , and it is very inconvenient, netizens need a simpler and more functional way to surf the Internet. I think portal websites will be a clear direction of development..."

"Web portals?"

Yang Zhiyuan looked at Pang Xuelin in puzzlement.

Pang Xuelin laughed and said: "Yes, it is a portal website. The so-called portal website, in a broad sense, is a web application framework, which integrates various application systems, data resources and Internet resources into an information management platform. , and provide users with a unified user interface, and establish business-to-customer, business-to-internal employee and business-to-business information channels, enabling companies to release various information stored inside and outside the company. In a narrow sense, The so-called portal website refers to an application system that provides certain types of comprehensive Internet information resources and provides related information services, and can provide netizens with one-stop Internet services such as news, navigation, search, mailboxes, forums, and communications.”

The eyes of Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo couldn't help but light up. Pang Xuelin's words seemed to open a door to the correct answer for them.

They had been compiling the Jerry World Wide Web guide all this time, but they hadn't realized what the site was useful for.

The reason why they put all their energy into it is more because this website has won the popularity of netizens, which gives them a very satisfying sense of accomplishment.

But for the future direction of the website, they do not have a clear concept.

What Pang Xuelin said just now undoubtedly pointed out the direction for them.

Yang Zhiyuan pondered for a moment, then said: "Mr. Pang, what do you mean, you plan to build a website similar to the role of online media?"

Pang Xuelin snapped his fingers and said with a smile, "Smart."

In fact, the portal website proposed by Pang Xuelin is very different from the Jerry World Wide Web guide created by Yang Zhiyuan and Ferro.

Jerry World Wide Web Guide is actually a website that mainly provides search services and plays the role of "getting started" for netizens, becoming a "gateway" for netizens to enter the Internet.

The portal website proposed by Pang Xuelin regards the provision of news services as the main business and even the core competitiveness of the portal website.

Yang Zhiyuan frowned and said, "Mr. Pang, how should we make a profit?"

Pang Xuelin said with a faint smile: "Open, free and advertising!"

One of the biggest reasons for the failure of later generations of Yahoo is that it was obviously a good media company, but it wanted to package itself as a technology company, and in the end it lost sesame seeds and watermelons.

Yahoo's success is mainly due to its creation of a new Internet business model: open, free and profitable, thus stimulating the birth and rapid development of e-commerce.

You must know that in the era when the Internet was just emerging, some companies led by America Online were still developing pay-dial users, trying to develop the Internet into a "second telephone network"!

Yahoo's intervention has greatly lowered the threshold of the Internet. Users only need to pay for telephone and broadband to surf the Internet happily!

Therefore, the rise of Yahoo is due to a general trend. Yahoo, which was established only one year ago in 1996, was listed on Nasdaq. The stock price soared from US$13 to US$33 that day, and Yahoo became the number one brand on the Internet in one fell swoop!

After the success of Yahoo, many companies quickly copied Yahoo's model, and the development of the Internet entered the era of "traffic is king".

Many companies have fallen into a state of madness, blindly pursuing traffic and not paying attention to content, resulting in worsening advertising benefits. Many companies do not feel pain and sorrow, but insert advertisements crazily in an attempt to carve up the small Internet advertising market. As a result, traffic has become cheaper and cheaper!

Around 2000, Yahoo also joined the ranks of crazy people, making crazy acquisitions without paying attention to technological improvement.

In 2000, when the Internet bubble burst, Yahoo was hit hard, and more than 90% of its stock value evaporated!

In 2002, under the management of the chief financial officer, Ms. Decker, Yahoo made drastic reforms and cut off many projects, such as online payment, bidding, shopping, etc., which immediately controlled the company's budget and reversed the company's loss. decline.

The new CEO, Samuel, successfully turned losses into profits after successive acquisitions of Iure, and in 2005 relied on search advertising revenue to bring Yahoo's performance to the top.

But the good times didn't last long. Yahoo's stock price fell to the bottom within less than two quarters of the peak in 2004-2005.

After tasting the sweetness brought by the search bidding ranking, Samuel blindly expanded, trying to compete with Google in the search market, instead of focusing on his own brand advertising, which greatly squeezed Yahoo profit margins.

In 2004, Yahoo's profitability fell short of Wall Street's expectations. It basically maintained its stock price in 2005 by selling a large number of Google's original shares in hand.

Looking back at the entire course of Yahoo’s development, it’s actually not difficult to see that as long as Yahoo keeps its position as the number one brand in advertising, it will be far from ending up like this.

But why did Yahoo take the risk and insist on fighting to the death with Google in the search market?

There are many mistakes in decision-making, but more of them are the pressure from Wall Street's greed!

Once a company's earnings fail to meet Wall Street's expectations, it will be ruthlessly abandoned by Wall Street, including: downgrading, malicious short selling, or even being sold directly!

Wall Street pays more attention to immediate interests, while the company's leadership needs to pay more attention to long-term development, and must find a perfect balance in it, otherwise it will be extremely detrimental to the company's development!

Clearly Yahoo did not have a competent leader who could clearly grasp this.

For example: Overstock, an online sales company in the United States, made a profit of one or two cents per share in the second quarter of 2005 than Wall Street expected. As soon as the performance was released, it was downgraded by the rating company, and the stock plunged more than half. Only then did I know that the company's stock was maliciously sold short by hedge funds, and the number of sold stocks was more than ten times the actual amount it owned!

Later, it was invalidated because it could not be delivered on time, but the stock had already plummeted, and the company almost closed!

Another example: AT\u0026T in the United States was forced to split into three companies: AT\u0026T, Lucent and NCR in 1995.

Because AT\u0026T and the other two long-distance telephone companies Mt are in a competitive relationship, in order for the latter two to sell their own telephone equipment, they split their company into the equipment manufacturing department and the telecommunications service department, so that Mt really came to buy Lucent's equipment, which caused a lot of trouble. Lucent's explosive growth in the short term, investors have made a lot of money, but it is very detrimental to the company's long-term development!

After the Mt telephone equipment market was saturated, in order to cater to Wall Street’s profit expectations, Lucent began to lend to some small and medium-sized companies that were unable to repay to quench their thirst. After the Internet bubble burst in 2000, those small and medium-sized companies closed down one after another and were unable to repay, causing huge losses!

Later, AT\u0026T split into four companies, divided into four companies: long-distance telephone, mobile phone, enterprise service and broadband. The reason was nothing more than short-sightedness and greed.

The competition between Yahoo and Google is undoubtedly a confrontation that must be lost, but after careful analysis of the reasons, it is not difficult to find that the company's genes have played a decisive role!

Yahoo was born to provide web search services. It acquired the Inktomi search engine in 2003 and then switched to Google, but it has never done search itself, and Yahoo advocates manual editing rather than automatic computer processing of information. Yahoo still uses manual adjustments to search results.

Yahoo’s technical deficiencies allow it to be regarded as a traditional media company. Unlike Google, it is a company with excellent technical genes. All search results and rankings on Google are ranked by computers, and engineers have relatively strong technical skills. High voice and status.

If Yahoo did not expand blindly during the dot-com bubble in 2000 but concentrated on its own brand advertising services, or gave up in the competition with Google, instead cooperated with Google and returned to its status as an online media, it would very likely become a strong player. Media companies stand tall in the Internet world.

What Pang Xuelin has to do now is to let Yahoo return to its original position.

As for whether to develop a search engine in the future, it depends on what Jerry Yang and Filo can make Yahoo look like.

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