"Come on, come on, meet ninety-eight. Meet in the silver moonlight, meet in the warm affection......"

Song Weiyang sat in front of the computer in his room, and he could hear the singing from a certain house next door.

Due to the continuous competition of DVD manufacturers in the market and the intensification of competition among VCD manufacturers, the price of VCD players is getting cheaper and cheaper. No, some workers of the Xianjiu Group can afford to buy it, and then build two pillar-like speakers, and the whole community can hear the song at home.

It is estimated that someone was annoyed by the noise, so he simply fought poison with poison, turned on his voice louder, and specially used a subwoofer: "I always want to confess to you, how heroic my mood is." I always want to confide in you, how much I love life......"

The two heroes soon became the Three Kingdoms: "Hey~ Happy gongs and drums, knocking out the festive every year, beautiful dances, and sending jubilant ...... every day"

Song Weiyang could only get up and close the glass window, and if he continued to listen to it like this, he was about to have a nervous breakdown.

It has to be said that China's piracy industry is very developed and extremely efficient. This is not even the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, and the songs that became popular in this year's Spring Festival Gala were actually made into VCD records, and they were sold to small cities like Rongping - people's genuine records have not yet been released!

Song Weiyang wanted to do a market research at this time, study the production and sales channels of pirated VCD records, and maybe use it as a graduation thesis.

On the Spring Festival Gala of the 30th of the Lunar New Year, those who do piracy must record the song that night, and then convert it into VCD format overnight. Then it was mass-produced in factories, shipped in all directions, distributed by dealers layer by layer, and finally appeared on the streets of large, medium and small cities.

These steps, the pirates actually completed in three or four days, which can be called a great business miracle in the world!

The phone rang suddenly, and Ding Ming called.

"The first day of the new year is the New Year, and the fourth day of the new year is the New Year?" Song Weiyang said with a smile.

Ding Ming said: "Old Song, I received an email yesterday from the United States. Someone was selling a search engine with a core algorithm called pagerank, and I talked to the company's search engine R&D team to see that the description was exactly what we needed. Therefore, I thought that after the eighth day of junior high school, I would lead a team to the United States to investigate. ”

"Are you sure it's pagerank?" Song Weiyang was a little confused, that's Google's core technology, and Google is making it big with that thing.

Ding Ming said: "It's really called pagerank. I once posted on a technology forum in the United States, saying that I want to recruit search engine experts in the United States, and I also left a company email, so I guess someone will come to sell technology after seeing the post. ”

Song Weiyang asked, "Have you contacted the other party?"

Ding Ming said: "I sent an email, but the other party has not replied." ”

Song Weiyang said: "Continue to keep in touch, get your visa ready, and prepare to go to the United States." ”

"Okay, I'll call you when there's news. Ding Ming said.

Song Weiyang thought to himself: Is this a butterfly effect? If Google's founder sells the core technology, will Google still be able to grow bigger? Or will Google still be founded?

Actually, it's not really a butterfly effect.

The two founders of Google developed the search engine at the end of 1997, but the name was not Google, it was called BackRub (the predecessor of Google).

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are real bulls, and the R&D team under Ding Ming, seven or eight people, have been working for more than half a year, and finally got the "intelligent search engine" out, which is not very easy to use. There are only two people in the family, and in their free time, they made the BackRub search engine in less than three months, and at the same time developed a non-full version of the pagerank algorithm.

After making a search engine and developing a pagerank algorithm, the first reaction of the two was not to start a company, but to license the technology. Since no company was willing to cooperate, they decided to sell it outright for $1.6 million.

No one wants to buy it!

Then I had to start my own company, so there was the later Google.

Scott Hassan, the future Google's No. 3 employee, who was friends of Larry and Sergey at this time, was helping the two sell search engines and found George Bell, the CEO of Excite (one of the mainstream search engines in the United States).

George Bell used his own search engine to search for the keyword "Internet" and found a bunch of jumble results. Then I used BackRub (the future Google) to search and found a bunch of very reasonable content, which shows that Google is still better to use.

But George Bell was upset and said, "We don't want your search engine, we don't want people to find what they're looking for easily, because we want people to stay on our site." ”

Yes, the Google search engine is so easy to use, so we resolutely don't use it!

It may sound ridiculous, but this is the mainstream business Internet concept in 1997: the portal is fundamental, and only when there are visits can there be money to be made, and only then can it be financed and refinanced. If netizens can easily search for content, what else can they do with portals?

The larger the portal, the more resistant it is to excellent search engines, for fear that their users will run away.

Even the search engine companies with the best reputation and the top three usage rates in the United States at this time will fully transform into portals in 1998 and no longer invest in additional research and development of search engines. As a result of this incident, Li Yanhong was so angry that he resigned and returned to China to found Baidu.

"Honey, are you out?" asked Chen Tao on the phone.

"It's already downstairs. Song Weiyang picked up his coat and went out.

He was going to drive to pick up Chen Tao, eat together at noon, and go to the movies in the afternoon.

Halfway through, Ding Ming called again: "The United States has returned the email." He said his name was Scott Hassan, a programmer and the BackRub search engine, which was developed by two of his friends. They want to license it to Sohu for $100,000 a year. If exclusively licensed, $500,000 per year, with a contract signed once a year. ”

Song Weiyang said: "Ask them if they sell or not, the pagerank algorithm must be won." ”

"Wait a minute, I asked for his ICQ and am communicating online. Ding Ming said.

Two minutes later, Ding Ming said: "The other party said that the pagerank algorithm could be sold, and the asking price was $3 million." ”

"Buy it!" Song Weiyang said excitedly.

"The company doesn't have that much money. Ding Ming said.

"I'll pay!" Song Weiyang said.

Ding Ming said, "I'll ask again." ”

More than ten minutes passed, Chen Tao had already gotten into the car, and Ding Ming called: "I asked him about the patent, and the PageRank algorithm has no patents." This person said vaguely, as if there was something wrong, it couldn't be someone else's technology stolen, right?"

Song Weiyang really didn't know the inside story, but he knew that Google's core technology was definitely not stolen, and instructed: "You go to the United States as soon as possible, and you must buy the technology." ”

"Okay, I'll get my visa tomorrow. Ding Ming's inner thought was to investigate the situation first.

If it weren't for the foresight of the traverser, the ghost would have bought the pagerank algorithm, and there is no final perfect version. Due to the partial overlap with Li Yanhong's patent, this thing was not approved by the US Patent Office until three years later.

If Song Weiyang buys the algorithm, it is estimated that PageRank will never be recognized by the US Patent Office.

But that's enough.

The question is, will Google still be born?