107th, let's burn money to play

The positive impact of the strategy of the big public relations department is not limited to the counterpart department that Spring and Autumn has taken a look at.

Using Gong Qiuqiu's platform this time, the large public relations department under the Chunqiu Group quickly expanded its business scope. This group followed the State Information Office and the other group followed the Ministry of Science and Technology. The Big Public Relations Department is not simply collusion between officials and businessmen or exchange of interests, but a lubricant for the cooperation between Chunqiu series companies, Zhiyu series companies and government departments, and does its best to reduce unnecessary friction and wear. With the coordination of the big public relations department, not only did we see the search engine in the spring and autumn, but the review progress of the Cambrian 2004 supercomputer project also accelerated sharply.

Chun Qiu took a look at it, just out of the gloom, suddenly news of Baidu's third financing came.

In June 2004, eight venture capital companies including DFJ, Google, Integrity_Partners, Peninsula_Capital, China_Value, Venture_TDF, China_Equity, Bridger_Management, etc., jointly raised US$15 million from Baidu. 15 million U.S. dollars is equivalent to 124 million yuan at the current exchange rate. Considering that Baidu's 2003 annual revenue was only 45.911 million yuan, its pockets instantly expanded several times.

In fact, Baidu is poor and is not short of money financially. Products like search engines have rich and rich ways of playing, and poor ways of living. Under the leadership of Robin Li, Baidu attaches great importance to the balance of payments. If it is greedy for equity, it can completely reject the joint financing of eight venture capital such as DFJ.

However, financing is not necessarily for money.

To develop to the scale of Baidu, the choice of venture capital is no longer for money, but to cooperate with these venture capital institutions.

Looking back at SoftBank Asia's financing Shanda Network in early 2003, Shanda Network was guarding the cornucopia of "Blood Legend", how could it be short of money. The main reason why Shanda Networks accepted SoftBank Asia’s investment is to take advantage of SoftBank Asia’s listing in the United States, and the small direction is to solve the shadow of the legendary copyright incident. In fact, soon after SoftBank Asia formally raised the Shanda Network, it dispatched people to South Korea to coordinate the copyright contradiction of Legend.

In the same way, Tencent is willing to sign a gambling agreement with Chunqiu for the purpose of developing its online game business.

Start-up companies and venture capital institutions seem to be in a tug of war. If the future prospects of a startup company are very clear, the head can calmly choose a partner; if the future prospect of a startup company is bleak, the more they want to rely on venture capital institutions, the more venture capital institutions will take the opportunity to blackmail unequal treaties.

In the Chinese search engine chaos, Baidu has never shown a failure, and can sit firmly in Diaoyutai to control the third financing. If Chunqiu takes a look at the future to launch a fierce attack on Baidu, and Baidu is defeated steadily, Robin Li is very likely to lose control of Baidu and become a puppet of venture capital institutions. The eight venture capital firms that co-financed Baidu all have deep backgrounds. Among them, China_Value is famous for its strong government relationship background in China. If Baidu's in-depth cooperation with China_Value after the decline, the commercial competition between Chunqiu Search and Baidu Search will become a court battle, it will be too troublesome.

Therefore, Wei Dongsheng decided to fight quickly.

From August 2003 to June 2004, especially during the review period of the State Council and other government agencies, Wei Dongsheng used paper materials and occasional exchanges and meetings to explain to all the employees of the project to Chunqiu. The part is understood ahead of time. After training, the employees of Chunqiu took a look at the project may not be optimistic about the prospects of the search engine business, but they understand what kind of results Wei Dongsheng wants.

After the Ministry of Public Relations coordinated to resolve the suppression of government agencies such as the State Information Office, Wei Dongsheng quickly concentrated the May, June, and July profits of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" and was always ready to advance the profits for August and September to save enough capital and ammunition. "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" has monthly sales of 159.32 million yuan in May, 15651 million yuan in June, 163.9 million yuan in July, and a total of 47973 million yuan. If the settlement date of certain operating expenses is delayed, Wei Dongsheng can use up to 400 million yuan.

At the same time, Chunteng Game's "Dancing Cute Lord" also handed in a perfect answer. The monthly sales in July were 8.866 million yuan, which greatly exceeded the 6 million expected. The capital market was surprised by the good news of "Dancing Mengzhu", and public opinion gradually became optimistic about Tencent and Chunqiu's cooperation product Chunteng, and Tencent's stock price immediately ushered in a new round of rise. Chunteng Games announced the July operating data of "Dancing Cute Girl" on August 5. Tencent's stock price continued to rise in the next few days, reaching a new peak and new record of HK$7.6 on August 15. Wei Dongsheng’s 9% equity has soared to 1.219 billion yuan; of which, Chunqiu’s 5.4% tradable equity is also valued at 730 million yuan.

In Wei Dongsheng's heart, Chunqiu sees that career is more important than financial investment in Tencent. If there is a problem with the capital turnover of Chunqiu Network, it may sell part of Tencent's equity to ease the crisis. With Tencent’s high equity realisation guarantee, the profits of "Ten Kingdoms" in August and September will be able to withdraw at least 100 million yuan in funds.

In other words, Wei Dongsheng can mobilize 500 million yuan to support the Spring and Autumn Period.

Baidu had just raised 15 million US dollars, and Wei Dongsheng smashed 500 million yuan.

This is the anger of real-world RMB players.

Come, let's burn money to play.

After burning this 500 million, the continued profits of "Ten Kingdoms" continued to burn until Baidu went bankrupt.

Since the technical level cannot quickly surpass competitors such as Baidu, Yahoo, Google, etc., capital games are used to increase the entry barriers of the search engine market, forcing them to continue to increase spending until they cannot play this money-burning game.

This is a capital war.

The 500 million fund is to supply ammunition for this war.

For now, the core mission of a search engine can be simplified into two aspects: traffic entry and business operations. Traffic entrance is the foundation of search engines, especially in 2004 when netizens were ignorant of search engines, they monopolized the traffic entrance, and a large number of passive users became the bag of the search engine. Commercial operation refers to search engine companies realizing their own traffic through business models such as bidding ranking promotion, corporate search services, portal search services, etc. This is where the profits of search engine companies are and the basis for the continued operation of search engine companies.

In the first half of 2004, Wei Dongsheng focused his attention on how to coordinate relations with government agencies such as the State Information Office. The development progress of Spring and Autumn Search was not optimistic. In terms of traffic entrance competition, Chunqiu search was tragically double-teamed by rivals such as Zhongsou, Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc.; in terms of business operation competition, the site opened by itself was shattered by the impact of Yahoo led by Zhou Hongyi, and the outward expansion plan was hit by Baidu. Boring back, it can be described as miserable and extremely miserable.

In mid-July 2004, Wei Dongsheng resolved the hidden dangers of the policy and began to lead the Spring and Autumn Period search and burn money counterattack.

The first wave of offensive, the Spring and Autumn Period search and lock the flow entrance competition.

The traffic entrance can be divided into small items such as browser, Internet navigation, and offline cooperation.

In 2003 and 2004, search engine companies did not realize the important role of browsers. Chunqiu Company was the first to release the Chunqiu Security Browser last year, quickly seizing this blank market. Computer Intelligent Life has already deconstructed Microsoft's Windows system, and sometimes even understands the relationship between Windows system and IE browser better than Microsoft engineers. When the Spring and Autumn Security browser continues to be updated several times, the technical content and user experience have been upgraded to the MyIE level. The product is far behind. For other search engines to launch browsers again, the first is the time difference and the second is that the user experience cannot catch up, and it is difficult to compete for the market from the Spring and Autumn security browser.

As for the browser, Spring and Autumn Search has won. In fact, the existing basic market share of Chunqiu Search mainly comes from the bonded users of Chunqiu's secure browser.

Wei Dongsheng has also paid attention to Internet navigation. When the Spring and Autumn security browser was launched, the website navigation was bundled.

However, this kind of Internet navigation is more like browser bundling promotion. Its user group is included in the Spring and Autumn Security Browser user group, which can stabilize the basic disk of Spring and Autumn Search, but cannot bring new users to Spring and Autumn Search. At the same time, the technical content of Internet navigation is low, and advanced technology is not required, so the advantage of time is particularly obvious. Just as other follow-up browsers cannot threaten the dominance of the Spring and Autumn Security Browser, the website navigation launched by Spring and Autumn cannot impact the original website navigation market.

Wei Dongsheng realized his mistake and immediately corrected it.

Nowadays, the leader in the website navigation market is the famous hao123.

Hao123 is also a partner of Baidu. Baidu provides technical support for it and hao123 helps Baidu divert traffic. Before Hao123 became famous, some people suggested that Baidu acquire hao123. Perhaps Baidu was tight on funds, or Baidu felt that the cooperation relationship between the two parties was very stable. Acquisition or acquisition is the same thing, so they rejected the proposal. In 2004, hao123 suddenly became popular, peer 265 wanted to acquire it, venture capital firm IDG wanted to invest in it, and even Google extended an olive branch to hao123, asking Li Xingping's psychological price of hao123. Baidu was aware of the crisis, and coupled with the third round of financing to obtain 15 million US dollars in financing, it was only late in launching the acquisition of hao123.

In August 2004, it has been circulated that Baidu will acquire hao123 for 50 million yuan in cash and some equity.

However, this is just a cover. We have already analyzed Baidu's revenue over the years. At this moment, Baidu is very poor. As of 2003, its annual revenue was only 45.911 million yuan. Although the third round of financing received 15 million US dollars "huge sum", how could he be willing to give hao123 so much money?

The so-called 50 million is just an exaggeration of routines.

Wei Dongsheng summarized the investigation results of the Spring and Autumn Business Intelligence Department and the monitoring of Baidu's capital flow by the computer intelligent life green algae. He has confirmed that the total reserve fund for Baidu's acquisition of hao123 is only 15 million yuan, and the psychological price may only be about 13 million yuan.

"The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" has sales of 150 million and a half in January. Since hao123 can be acquired with a very small amount of profit to obtain huge traffic, why bother to cultivate your own website navigation? It takes time and energy to promote the website navigation that comes with the Spring and Autumn Security browser, and its cost is much higher than that of hao123, which has already formed a scale of mergers and acquisitions.

Wei Dongsheng quickly finalized the acquisition of hao123 and ordered the acquisition team to immediately rush to Guangdong to attack Baidu.

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