$1,000,000 in cash, plus 500,000 shares of Netscape stock, for a total of $5 million......

Such a generous condition not only made Chen Dayou moved, but even Du Qiu's crossing party was also a little moved. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Netscape has just started the IPO process at this time, and the stock price is expected to be $10-12 when it is listed, Mark Anderson in order to tempt Du Qiu with appreciation space, it has dropped directly to $8 per share, in fact, when Netscape went public in August, the opening price was $71, and at the end of the year, when the market value was the highest, the stock price broke through $170, so that 500,000 shares are worth as little as $35.5 million, and as much as $85 million.

It's just a browser, from February 18th to March 18th, it's only 28 days......

Whether it's $35.5 million or $85 million, it's enough to spend a lifetime......

However, Du Qiu only hesitated for a second or two, then refused in a very firm tone, and said: "Mark, thank you for your kindness, my company does not sell it, but you can use the products and technologies for free." ”

When Jiang Danfeng translated this sentence, he felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, his hands and feet were sweaty, his tongue was dry, 5 million US dollars, equivalent to more than 40 million yuan, Du Qiu actually refused!

Three months ago, this guy was just a smuggler who was swindling and even having a problem eating!

Now that he has easily given up the opportunity to become a multimillionaire, what is he going to do?!

Mark Anderson was disappointed by Du Qiu's refusal, and persuaded him a few more words, and when he saw that he was determined not to sell, he had to say: "Du, you are a great programmer, although we can't work together in the same company, I hope to maintain a close relationship with you in the future." ”

"You can call me autumn, Du is my last name, autumn is my name. Du Qiu's purpose is to cooperate, he first corrected Mark Anderson's mistake in the title, and then said: "I would like to work with your company to develop a Napoleonic code on web technology." ”

"Codex?"

"It's just an analogy, I think the current web technology is too confusing, it doesn't even have the most basic standards, like medieval Europe, so we need a Napoleon, and a Napoleonic code. ”

"Qiu, you may not know much in China, Tim has already set up W3C in October last year and is working on this. ”

Tim refers to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, who established the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on October 1, 1994, with the aim of solving the incompatibility problems caused by different platforms, technologies and developers in Web applications, ensuring the smooth and complete flow of Web information, formulating a series of standards and urging Web application developers and content providers to follow these standards.

If the Internet is compared to a country, W3C is equivalent to a parliament that formulates laws, but after a normal country formulates laws, it will be enforced by violent agencies, but the Internet is a loose alliance, and the law enforcement power is in the hands of major IT companies, and the standards formulated by W3C can only be "recommended for implementation", not "enforced", and in the process of making standards, there are various kinds of nonsense, and often a technology cannot be done for several years.

The most famous case is the standard of the HTML language, the 4.0 standard was released in 1997, the 4.01 standard was released in 1999, and then it went through the blind toss of XHTML, was boycotted by mainstream browsers such as IE and Firefox, and after the open and secret struggle between Microsoft and Google, it has been ripping for more than ten years, until October 2014, the 5.0 standard was released, and this standard has not been popularized until Du Qiu crossed.

Du Qiu is a cross-party, knowing that Tim Berners-Lee will be walking into a dead end in the next few years, tossing the "what you see is what you get" HTML standard, not only wasting a lot of energy, but also ruining his own reputation, because this style is only suitable for static word processing, not for dynamic web design at all.

In line with the great ideal of benefiting tens of millions of Web developers in the future, Du Qiu decided that instead of waiting for others to formulate standards, it would be better to take matters into his own hands, taking advantage of Microsoft's scourge before the browser, first unified the three basic languages of HTML, CSS and iscript, and then tossed XML, DOM, BOM and other things, and pinched the standardization of Web technology in his hands.

However, the ideal is just the ideal, just talk about it, the main purpose of this is to suppress competitors and lay the foundation for the future Internet empire, because although the standard itself is free and open, it will take at least a few months or even a year or two to achieve, and the leader will run first in the process of formulating, and competitors can only wait for the standard to be released before starting to run, how to chase?

"Mark, W3C is just a loose organization that sets standards based on the status quo, it's too inefficient, we can't wait for them to develop standards before developing new products, the HTML language has been invented for four or five years, it's still in a state of chaos, I think we have a responsibility to ......"

Mark Anderson is a very shrewd businessman, the iView browser and the iScript engine are open source and free, Netscape can use it at will, but he deliberately offered a high price of 5 million dollars to buy, with only one purpose, that is, to hold the standard of the iScript language in his hands, so Du Qiu elaborated on his improvement plan for the HTML language a little, which immediately attracted attention.

"Qiu, I very much agree with your point of view, about the acquisition, we can talk about it again, if you agree to the acquisition, we can set up a strong team for you, there is no upper limit on R&D funds, and it does not interfere with your work, how about it?"

"Good intentions, but I don't like working in big companies. Du Qiu refused again, proposing: "I mean that our two companies will jointly set up a working group to promote the development of web technology. ”

For a rational and sane businessman, if he can't keep it for himself, then it is also a good choice to cooperate with each other, it is better than becoming a mortal enemy, Mark Anderson quickly agreed to Du Qiu's proposal, and agreed to send two programmers to keep in touch with him to jointly research and develop web technology standards.

Two people are too few......

But this is a good sign, Microsoft is currently working on IE with a total of only 6 employees......

When leaving Mark Anderson's office and taking the elevator downstairs, Chen Dayou clenched his fist and slammed the box twice, shouting, "$5 million! $5 million!

Jiang Danfeng also regretted it, and said puzzledly: "Du Qiu, why do you want to refuse? That's more than 40 million, and Sanjiang Provincial TV may not be able to make so much money from advertising for a year." ”

"Calmly, we will earn more in the future. ”

Chen Dayou slammed the elevator twice more and asked: "Du Qiu, Netscape now has tens of millions of users, and its market value is at least more than 100 million US dollars after it is listed.

"Brother Chen, Netscape is congenitally insufficient, acquired out of balance, and will die soon, and I can't fulfill my dream at all. ”

"Why is it congenitally deficient and acquired?"

"It is a hybrid of the traditional software industry and the emerging Internet industry, the traditional software industry pays attention to selling a product, making a profit, the Internet industry pays attention to sending products for free, and charging service fees or advertising fees, Netscape's management comes from the traditional software industry, and does not understand the business model of the Internet industry at all, and the head and feet cannot be coordinated, and they will definitely fall to death. ”

He saw that Chen Dayou and Jiang Danfeng didn't quite understand, so he explained in detail: "When Netscape officially released Scape-Navigator last year, Mark Anderson overrode public opinion and released it in the form of shareware, which was free for ordinary users, so it occupied more than 70% of the browser market in a few months and had tens of millions of users, but this year Jim Barksdale went from AT-& After amp;-T jumped over to become CEO, he immediately decided to charge $49 for the average user to upgrade, so many users simply did not upgrade and continued to use the old version of the browser. ”

"Our browser quality is better than Netscape's, and it's released in a free and open source format, with no intention of charging for anything, and it's sure to quickly take away their users, maybe they'll be on par with them in a few months, and they'll be able to go public when the time comes, so why give up hundreds of millions of dollars in the future for just $5 million?"

With such an explanation, Chen Dayou immediately put aside his annoyance, his mind regained his clarity, and he nodded again and again: "It makes sense, it makes sense, I'm shrewd in small things, and confused in big things, so my dad always taught me to have calm in every big thing, and then I can make great achievements." Fortunately, you are a major shareholder, if it were me, there is a chance that you would have agreed to it just now. ”

After Du Qiu and the others left, Mark Anderson called Michael Toy and Jamie Gavinsky and asked, "Can we integrate iView into our browser?"

"Yes, yes, but it takes time. ”

"How long?"

"It can take about two weeks to a month. ”

"We don't have that much time, so we're giving you 10 days at most to integrate the main features, including the iscript engine, into our browser, first with the release, then DOS, Unix, and Linux. ”

At this time, the phone on the desk rang, and Mark Anderson answered it and said: "The legal department has studied the open source license of iView, and thinks that it is more lenient than CPL, and our own program does not need to be open source, and only needs to release the modified iView source code in the form of CDDL license." ”

Jamie Gavinsky was a big believer in free software, he didn't resist open source software at all, he simply took the task, and then left, Michael Toy is a management, more sensitive to business, and said worriedly: "Mark, if you do this, the core technology is in someone else's hands, and we will lose control of the product." ”

"I know, but iScript is a new technology, and if it is developed independently, it will take at least three months to half a year, and by the time it is completed, iView may have captured the entire market. Mark Anderson rubbed his forehead and said, "I have to negotiate with Clark and Jim again, raise the price a little more, and buy Qiu's company as much as possible, otherwise it will have a serious impact on the IPO." ”

Acquisitions aren't a big focus for Michael Toy, who advises: "Since Jim decided to charge an upgrade fee, our browser user growth has slowed down, and now that iView is open source and free, I'm afraid it's going to take away a lot of users, and I think that $49 upgrade fee should be eliminated, and multiplayer users don't upgrade at all anyway." ”

"Michael, I know it's a very stupid decision to charge an upgrade fee, but if you don't charge for it, the IPO earnings report will be very ugly, because we have almost no revenue, only spending! spending!" Mark Anderson said, clicking on a pile of papers on his desk, "We have to let Wall Street investors know how companies make money, and not make them think that companies are only going to spend money." ”

Michael Toy was speechless, because in 1995, no one in the world knew what Netscape, an Internet company that sells software, made money......

Of course, there is one person who knows, but he doesn't say it......