If Silicon Valley is the center of the Internet world, then Palo Alto is the center of Silicon Valley.

Google's corporate address is located at 165 University Road in Palo Alto, an office building that has given rise to many Internet companies. Two months ago, a website called PayPal went online next door, which is still unknown, but years later, many Chinese call it "American Alipay."

Google has grown extremely fast, and in more than a year, it has more than 80 employees.

However, there has been frequent negative news recently, and some netizens have been deceived through search ad links. For example, last month, someone used Google to search for a booking company, and even called the ticket money, and did not see the ticket until the day of the flight, and sued Google in a fit of rage.

These incidents are so loud that even if you think on your knees, you can guess that someone is fueling the troubles, nothing more than trying to get Google to accept the financing package.

Google took the initiative to compensate the victims for their losses, and at the same time published a statement on the homepage of the website and in the newspaper: "Google does not do evil and will not be an accomplice to the fraudsters." We firmly believe that in the long run, companies that do good for the world are more in line with our philosophy and those of our shareholders, even if we give up some short-term interests to do so. Starting today, Google will be conducting strict vetting of advertisers, and will introduce a special screening mechanism in the near future. ”

Advertisers were re-vetted and new ads were paused, which caused Google's revenue to plummet rapidly.

When Song Weiyang walked into the company, he happened to see two employees being taken away by the police, and couldn't help asking, "What's the situation?"

"The moths of the advertising department," Sergei explained simply, "took money from scammers to help them circumvent ad censorship in the hope that they would be rehabilitated in prison." ”

"That's the way it should be. Song Weiyang said with a smile.

Google hasn't been able to eradicate fake ads since the day it started charging for search ads.

Historically, Google has also had various scandals, and once was directly investigated by the FBI. The reason is that Google's advertising department actively helped scammers evade the censorship mechanism for profit, and a large number of counterfeit, counterfeit, and smuggled drugs have been flooding search results for a long time, and Google was fined $500 million. This scandal is really not a violation by individual employees, but the involvement of the entire advertising department of Google!

In the face of interests, any censorship mechanism is an ornament!

Google was fined $500 million for playing so blindly, so it became more and more restrained. And Baidu also played like this, but it has not been retributed, so it is even more unscrupulous.

That's why Google and Baidu's ad censorship mechanisms are similar, but increasingly different – China is so when it comes to consumer rights litigation that sometimes the legal and law enforcement authorities are all about showmanship, and they can only use public opinion to make a big deal out of it.

There is also the lag of the law, and the punishment of many laws and regulations in China is still stuck in the 80s and 90s. Even if the black-hearted enterprise loses the lawsuit, it will only be fined 35,000 yuan and ordered to rectify (compensation is calculated separately), and the judge can't do anything about it, and the sentence is already the highest punishment standard.

China's new Advertising Law was enacted in 2015, which finally increased the amount of fines, but by how much?

Where false advertisements are published, a fine of between 3 and 5 times the advertising fee is to be imposed, and where the advertising fee cannot be calculated or is obviously low, a fine of between 200,000 and 1,000,000 RMB is to be imposed. Where there are three or more violations or other serious circumstances within two years, a fine of between 5 and 10 times the advertising fee is to be given, and where the advertising cost cannot be calculated or is obviously low, a fine of between 1 million and 2 million RMB is to be given.

That is to say, Baidu lost a lawsuit for false advertising, and was fined 2 million yuan, which is a fart! Not to mention a fine of 500 million US dollars, if Baidu is fined 500 million yuan, do you dare Baidu to be so arrogant.

Unless there is a powerful agency to take the lead and prosecute and investigate a large number of cases at the same time, Baidu can learn a painful lesson.

……

Song Weiyang, Larry, and Sergei entered the conference room together, sat down and didn't say a few words, and the project leader of Sequoia Capital also came.

"Mr. Harris, this is Mr. Song Weiyang, the majority shareholder of Google. Larry introduced.

Harris was a bearded man, with a smile on his face, and took the initiative to shake Song Weiyang's hand and said, "Hello, Mr. Song!"

Song Weiyang nodded in greeting, sat back and crossed Erlang's legs and said, "You can continue to negotiate, I'll just listen to it." ”

Sergei said: "There are two fundamental differences at present, one is that Sequoia Capital's valuation of Google is too low, and the other is the setting of a dual voting system. ”

Harris shrugged, "Sir, $600 million is already a high valuation. ”

Larry said: "Webvan's revenue last year was not as good as Google's, but it can be valued at $1.5 billion, why is Google's valuation only $600 million?"

"I've explained this a long time ago," Harris said, "Webvan has already raised two rounds of funding and has a lot of money injected. In addition, Webvan has a number of stores and delivery stations, which score highly in the assessment. ”

Half a year later, when Webvan went on its IPO, it was valued at $8 billion. Then the Internet company went astray, took the money to build stores and channels frantically, and after only a few months of play, the capital chain broke, and declared bankruptcy in the consternation of everyone.

If you have to make an analogy, Webvan's operating model is a bit similar to JD.com. Unfortunately, the United States is vast and sparsely populated, the cost of delivery is too high, the efficiency of online shopping is too low, and the bursting of the Internet bubble has directly led to this company becoming a martyr.

"Webvan's store and channel investment, definitely not more than $10 million, that's not a reason for them to be overvalued," Larry said. ”

"Investors are looking at Webvan's business model, which is different from Amazon," Harris said. Amazon mainly sells books and audio-visual products online, while Webvan sells everyday goods, and Webvan can definitely become an online Walmart, so it is valued at $1.5 billion. ”

"Google has its own business model," Sergey said, "and it's a unique business model, the only one in the whole of North America!"

Harris laughed: "But there are many search engines, and if Yahoo comes to its senses and acquires an excellent search engine, I'm afraid Google's development future will be blocked." ”

"But Yahoo only cares about the traffic to the portal, because the traffic is tied to the stock price. They won't do other business, and even put a better search engine without it, because they are afraid that the search will cause too good and lose users. Larry argued.

Historically, it wasn't until 2002, when Google's annual revenue reached $240 million, that Yahoo suddenly realized something and offered $3 billion to buy Google. It was the time of the dot-com bubble, and the value of dot-com companies was vastly undervalued, and the $3 billion price tag was not too insulting.

Harris frowned, "What do you think the valuation should be?"

"At least $1.5 billion!" Sergei said, now is the golden age of the Internet, and it is normal to quote $2 billion.

"I'm afraid the price is a bit whimsical. Harris said.

Larry laughed and said, "You can go back and continue to do the assessment, anyway, Google is not short of money for the time being." ”

Song Weiyang interjected: "Even if I am short of money, I can continue to invest." ”

Harris was extremely troubled by this, and said: "Then let's put the appraisal price aside for the time being, let's talk about the dual-class share structure first, and the ratio of voting rights to 1 to 10 seems to be too low." ”

"This is non-negotiable," Sergei said, "and you have only two options: accept it or not." ”

The AB-share model was very popular in the American Internet industry at this time, and under the same circumstances, the founder's stock voting power was several times that of external investors. One vote is equal to two votes, one vote is equal to five votes, and one vote is equal to ten votes, all of which are okay, and the two sides can negotiate and determine.

Harris had a splitting headache, he hadn't met such a difficult founder for a long time, and he had to go back and report to the company's executives.

Next, Song Weiyang met with the project leaders of several other venture capital institutions, and without exception, all of them collapsed.

In fact, Google's funding has bottomed out, because the pace of development is so fast that the monthly salary of employees in their 80s is a large expense.

Larry and Sergei brought Song Weiyang here purely for the sake of acting.

A few days later, Taurus Capital, which has no reputation in the United States, suddenly announced that it would continue to invest in Google, valuing Google at $1.5 billion.

Song even went on a talk show, bragging about how he sniped Soros, and then invited two newspapers to build momentum for Taurus Capital and Google. It's all about Google's liquidity, and if there are no VC firms that throw money in, Google will have to pay back next month.

Although they knew that Google was bluffing, those venture capital institutions panicked. Because the momentum is also effective, more and more limelight companies pay attention to Google, and the competitive pressure becomes greater in an instant.

Finally, Sequoia Capital, KPCB and other large venture capital firms began to connect in tandem, and they felt that they could not eat Google alone, so they prepared to join forces to launch a financing plan.

Five venture capital firms negotiated with Google, with the latest valuation at $800 million, and an investment of $400 million to acquire a third stake in Google.

At the same time, the five venture capital firms have also made a request, and they plan to send a CEO to Google to do administrative operations.

When this news came out, it immediately shocked the United States.

This year's king of Internet financing is Webvan, and the second place is Google!

By the time the second round of funding was over, Google's valuation had skyrocketed to $1.2 billion. These venture capital companies are too much money and urgently need to withdraw funds in the stock market, so they can't wait to go public with Google, and they have spared no effort to start all kinds of campaigns, claiming that Google has created a new era of online business models.

If this momentum continues, I am afraid that Google's next round of financing will be valued at more than $3 billion.

In these years, it doesn't matter if you make money on the Internet or not, the more awesome you blow, the more valuable it is, and Webvan's $8 billion valuation is also blowing out.

And Song Weiyang and Taurus Capital also showed their talents in this incident and began to be well-known by some American people.

The Chinese media soon got the second-hand news and directly blew up, the major shareholder of the $1.2 billion American Internet company is actually a Chinese - not a Chinese like Yang Zhiyuan, Song Weiyang is a native Chinese!