There is nothing inherently wrong with monopoly, and patent protection is a kind of monopoly protection.

The anti-monopoly laws of countries around the world are more about preventing monopoly enterprises from using their own advantages in the technology market to suppress competitors. In other words, monopoly is not wrong, and it is wrong to use monopoly advantage to suppress competitors.

However, in practice, it is always difficult to determine the standard of monopoly.

As a result of the vague definition criteria, anti-monopoly has often become a tool for political and economic games between enterprises, capital, and even the state.

Egrett Corporation, or the entire Westeros system, has created a new era of the Internet in advance through the layout of the whole industry chain of World Wide Web technology.

Companies such as Cisco, AOL, and Egrete have invested billions of dollars over the past few years. It stands to reason that with such a huge upfront investment, the Westeros system can fully enjoy the benefits brought by the Internet industry with peace of mind.

The problem now is that the interests involved in the Internet industry are too huge. It is so large that not only is the Westeros system unable to be eaten alone, but many people will not allow the Westeros system to enjoy this huge cake alone.

Even Tim Berners Lee, who focuses on technology research and development and is not well-versed in human affairs, saw the company's 1992 annual financial report and realized the problem.

With many memories of his two lives, Simon has a clearer idea of the situation that Igrete will face.

In the nineties of the twentieth century, Microsoft was tossed to death by the antitrust department of the United States, to a large extent, it was not the monopoly of Microsoft's operating system, but a few Microsoft shareholders such as Damen, who held too many shares of Microsoft.

When Bill Gates, Paul Allen and others continued to reduce their holdings, Microsoft gradually became a mass-owned company integrated with the U.S. economy, and the operating system giant never encountered a large-scale antitrust investigation.

After the morning earnings conference, Simon discussed the situation facing Igrete in the afternoon with three top executives, Tim Berners Lee, Jeff Bezos and Carol Butz.

Microsoft has Apple's competitors, Intel's competitors have AMD, IBM's competitors have SUN, and the problem for Igrett now is that the new technology company, which pioneered a new era of the Internet in advance, doesn't even have a decent rival.

After the completion of the e-mail technology license, Microsoft and AOL, which have been licensed for commercial operation, are preparing their own portal businesses.

However, even if Microsoft and AOL's network business is online and can compete with Igret, in the eyes of outsiders, the three companies still belong to the same camp to a large extent.

The Sherman Antitrust Act in the United States clearly defines that collusion between affiliated companies to control the market is also a monopoly.

Egrete has released a large number of World Wide Web patented technologies for free, and it is unlikely that the core patents held by the company will be further released in the short term.

Without a competitor appearing, it is equally impossible to create a competitor out of thin air.

In fact, even the powerful Microsoft and AOL are unlikely to pose much of a threat to Igret's network business in the short term, let alone build a competitor from scratch.

Then, if you want to avoid the anti-monopoly pressure that Igrett may be subjected to, there are only two ways, one is to take the initiative to split, according to Simon's original plan, to split the major businesses of Igrett into several different companies, and the other is to carry out external financing as soon as possible, or carry out an IPO, and cede sufficient equity shares to the capital of all parties.

The first way, after all, is a symptom but not a cure.

Second, the most thorough solution is to sell equity and integrate Igrete into the entire U.S. economy.

In fact, Simon made this kind of plan a long time ago, and for companies such as Cisco, AOL, and Igrete, he only hopes to retain about 30% of the equity after continuing to reduce his holdings.

Considering the terrifying market value of these companies in the future, a 30% stake is still a very large fortune.

By the time the small meeting of several core management personnel ended, the preliminary plan had been finalized.

Egrett will raise $1.5 billion in its first external financing, which is expected to sell 10% of its shares.

Based on the company's revenue of nearly $2 billion in 1992 and a high growth rate of nearly 400%, if it goes public, the company's market value is definitely on par with today's Cisco and AOL.

Therefore, the valuation of $15 billion is still very conservative for Igret.

If you know a little bit about Egret's position in the emerging Internet field and its financial figures for 1992, it should be clear that a 10% stake and an offer of $1.5 billion are very cost-effective.

If someone thinks that Igrett is opening his mouth, then the other party is obviously not worth cooperating.

Although the offer is as high as $1.5 billion, this 10% stake is not something that anyone can buy if they want to, if it is an Arab tyrant or a Japanese chaebol, sorry, go cool.

This part of the equity will only be sold to the capital forces in the United States that have a decisive influence on the federal political economy, so as to provide assistance to Igrett when it encounters antitrust and other pressures.

The human heart is always greedy and insufficient.

Simon also knows that a 10% stake will definitely not satisfy the outside world, and this part of the financing is just a prelude.

Egrete will also launch its IPO plan as soon as possible.

Counting the equity awards promised to Tim Berners Lee and other executives, as well as the option incentives of many employees, Westeros' shareholding in Eaglet will quickly fall to less than 70% in the next few years.

San Francisco, Palo Alto.

At the headquarters of Eagle Rett Company, when the financing plan was finalized, Tim Berners Lee and the three of them thought more about the equity award plan on their bodies.

According to the original agreement, each of them will receive up to 5% of the equity award of Eagle for a five-year contract.

With the current momentum of Igret, unless Simon reverses and tears up the contract, a 5% stake is basically a certainty.

Then, even according to the valuation of $15 billion in this financing, the value of 5% equity will reach $750 million.

$750 million.

Just this wealth is enough for them to occupy a relatively prominent position on the list of the 400 richest people in the United States.

When they first joined the company, none of the three felt that they would be able to gain so much.

So, for the rest of the afternoon, Simon could clearly feel that Jeff Bezos's tone was obviously a little high-spirited when he explained to him the upcoming Igrete affiliate program of Egret.

No one can predict their future.

The current $750 million is already satisfying for this descendant of Cuban immigrants from the bottom of the family.

If Jeff Bezos knew that he would become the richest man in the world with a net worth of more than 100 billion dollars in another time and space, I don't know what he would think.

Of course, if forever only if.

"We have tested the ad distribution system on more than 20 partner websites, and I feel that accurate automatic ad delivery is not the best solution at this stage, and for the time being, we should adopt a customized advertising strategy and customize a customized advertising package for different advertisers. ”

In another conference room at Egret's headquarters, Jeff Bezos explained the technical details of the affiliate program and began to introduce the specific implementation plan.

The advertising alliance program is naturally formulated by Simon based on the advertising alliance plans of the major Internet giants in his memory.

When it was first proposed, not everyone at Igrete executives was in favor of the plan, and many believed that the affiliate program could lead to the emergence of a large number of Igrete competitors. Therefore, compared to the advertising affiliate program, Igrete should focus more on its own expansion in the content field.

At this stage, the news information, web forum, micro-blog, e-mail and other businesses of the Igrete portal are developing rapidly, which also provides sufficient rich content support for the advertising business of the Igrete portal. Because of the company's strong position in the content field, some management inevitably believe that Egrett alone is enough to support the content supply of the entire Internet.

This clearly goes against Simon's original positioning of the company Eaglet.

In Simon's plan, Igrete will be a high-tech company that mainly builds Internet platforms, and will definitely not become an Internet media company that mainly produces content.

With the popularization of the Internet, hundreds of millions of Internet users have differentiated needs for online content, which is simply not something that an Internet media company can provide.

Through services such as search engines, microblogs and web forums, it is the survival of Egrett to provide a content display platform for Internet users, so that more content providers and Internet users can produce their own content.

In the Internet 1.0 era, Internet media companies such as Yahoo and AOL competed for land, and the result seemed to be prosperous, but they all declined rapidly after the advent of the Internet 2.0 era.

The current Igrete portal is just an excesses for the Igrete company.

The Google search engine and Facebook microblog, which Igrete has begun to operate independently, as well as the Amazon online store, which has rapidly emerged in the past year, are the foundation for Igrett to become an Internet supergiant in the future.

It's just that, of course, Simon will not preach this fundamental development strategy everywhere.

Within Igret, only a few core executives are aware of his specific ideas, so it is inevitable that there will be many different voices in the process of developing the advertising network program.

With absolute control of Igret, Simon will not be disturbed by such objections, but will undoubtedly ask the management to implement the plan, knowing that Simon has a long-term plan for Igret, and Jeff Bezos and others are also very supportive of this plan.

Through the Igrete Affiliate Program, many websites that cannot do business on their own have a clear monetization channel, which can accelerate the development of the Internet field. Only when the content in the Internet field is richer, the business of Igrete can develop faster, which is actually a mutually beneficial relationship.

By the end of the work schedule of Egret, it was already four o'clock in the afternoon.

Simon's day's work was not over, leaving the headquarters of the Eagle company and rushing to the Tinkobar company, founded by Claire Gain, a C-girl.

In accordance with Simon's vision, Tinkobar has recently developed a prototype of its first digital music player. While there was still some time, Simon planned to go over and see for himself.

Arriving at the headquarters of Tinkobar, which is not far from Egrett's company, Girl C and Neil Brantley, another partner of Tinkobar, are already waiting for Simon, and they also see the petite Jennifer Bray behind Girl C.

After greeting Girl C, seeing Little Jenny step forward, Simon couldn't help but reach out and rub it on the girl's head, and smiled, "Don't you need class today?"

No way, the little girl is only as tall as Simon's chest, which is too suitable for rubbing her head.

Jennifer did not resist Simon's movements, but shrunk her neck delicately, her long eyelashes narrowed slightly, like a cat being petted by her owner, while not forgetting to respond to Simon: "There is no class in the afternoon." ”

Although he was well aware of the little girl's age, Simon still had a flirtatious feeling of being a minor.

Looking again, Claire, Neil Brantley and others are all professional suits, but the little girl is wearing a very casual pale yellow sweatshirt and jeans, and a pair of white flat shoes on her feet, which makes her look even more unusual when she stands in the crowd. It seems that a parent brought his child to the company when he went to work.

Simon actually understands that little Jenny was arranged by Janet to enter Stanford University, because of what happened at the concert, Girl C and others naturally regarded her as their own woman, so they were so 'conniving'.

Smiling, Simon didn't say anything more and walked towards the inside of the office building with everyone.

Jennifer Bray obediently followed the crowd, her pretty eyes quietly watching.

She had already discovered one thing.

This time, it turned out to be Alison Norris, a girl who was accompanying Simon as an assistant, and 'Big Jenny', who had always been very wary of them in the past, did not come with Simon this time.

Although she didn't know why, the little girl realized that this seemed like a good opportunity.

Simon didn't care about Jenny's thoughts, and when he went to a lab in the office building, he quickly saw a prototype of a digital music player that had just been developed.

According to a series of trademarks filed in advance by Tinkobar, the machine will be named iPlayer.

Simon feels that iPlayer is a more suitable name for a digital music player than iPod, and that the iPod, which has also applied for a trademark, may be used for other electronic products in the future.

Neil Brantley first showed Simon the basic construction of the prototype.

The prototype in front of him, the size of a tape walkman at this stage, is still far from the standard of matchbox size in Simon's memory, but it is also the limit of what can be achieved by this stage of technology.

You must know that the core storage device of the iPlayer player, the 1.5-inch micro hard drive, is already the size of a matchbox.

The 1.5-inch, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch standards for mechanical hard disks specifically refer to the size of the disk platters inside the hard disk, and the entire hard disk is often much larger.

In Simon's memory, the 1.5-inch micro hard drive was once able to be the size of a piece of 'bubble gum', instead of the current 'matchbox', mainly because the internal mechanical structure has not yet achieved maximum optimization of compression. The 3.5-inch hard drive at this stage is also much larger than the 3.5-inch hard drive in Simon's memory.

Moreover, despite its large size, the capacity of micro hard drives at this stage is very small.

The prototype developed by Tinkobar uses a micro hard disk that IBM has not yet mass-produced, and the capacity is only a pitiful 20M. According to the MP3 audio format developed by Igret, under a high degree of compression, the average size of each song is about 3M, and a micro hard disk can only hold six or seven songs, which is not enough for a record.

However, with the rapid growth of the computer industry, it is only a matter of time before the capacity of HDDs multiplies exponentially.

Neil Brantley said that as long as the market demand is sufficient, the major hard disk manufacturers that have accumulated over the years in technology are fully capable of rapidly increasing the capacity of micro hard drives.

In the short term, only one or two hundred megabytes of capacity are needed, which is enough for a digital player at this stage.

In terms of storage media, Simon certainly considered flash memory as well.

However, flash memory chips at this stage are limited to the development of semiconductor technology and the limited market demand for the same reason, and usually only have a capacity of several hundred K.

Although flash memory has many advantages over mechanical hard disks in terms of storage stability, read speed, and energy consumption, because the capacity is too small, the only way to develop digital music players in the next five to ten years is to use micro hard drives.