The day after the EB technical standardization meeting, the official website of iVie Browser published an announcement announcing that version 2.0 will be released in the next 30 days, ensuring compatibility with existing web pages and full support for the new standard.

As soon as the announcement came out, it immediately shook the entire Internet industry, especially Netscape, and was caught off guard, you know

The new standard has changed a lot, HTML has a lot of new features, iScript has corrected some syntax, CSS is something that was not there before, if you want to fully support the new standard, you not only need to develop new features, but also rewrite the old code, the workload is very large, in the traditional development mode, it takes at least 3 to 6 months to complete, if you take into account complex compatibility issues, it may take longer.

Because of this, Netscape CTO Mark Anderson's first words after seeing the announcement were, "This can't be!"

The second sentence is: "Autumn has betrayed us, and he wants to start an all-out war." ”

The third sentence is, "How did he do it?"

How? Open source, of course......

iScript was "invented" by Du Qiu, CSS was discovered by Du Qiu, and there is a lot of autonomy in the formulation of standards for these two, so as early as May, he started the research and development of iVie 2.0, and when the 3C standardization meeting was held in September, about 60% of the code has been completed, and at this time, Netscape has just decided to cooperate with Snapdragon to jointly develop standards, and a single line of code has not been written.

At 8 p.m. on September 14th, Du Qiu released all the development plans and source code of iVie 2.0 to the Internet, and at the same time wrote a passionate proposal, calling on all open source software enthusiasts to unite and jointly complete the iVie 2.0 completion plan codenamed "Cruel Angel" - "Neon Genesis Evangelion" It is about to premiere on TV, and this codename is not only suitable for the occasion, but also can create news topics in Dongying, after all, in 1995, Dongying had the second largest number of Internet users in the world, and it is a market that cannot be ignored.

In the eyes of many people, Du Qiu is still a nobody in March, Snapdragon is just a leather bag company, iVie 1.0 was released in an open source way, but it is just a helpless choice for a clever woman to cook without rice, and now Du Qiu has become famous all over the world, and the company is at a critical moment of financing, so competitors, venture capital managers, media reporters and even believers in the concept of open source software all agree that iVie 2.0 cannot be open source, and it will definitely become a pure commercial software like indos.

Therefore, when Du Qiu announced open source, he shattered the glasses of countless people, and the unprecedented development model attracted a large number of programmers who were not interested in the concept of open source to join, and the gimmick of treating money like dung attracted the attention of many media, including the popular magazines "Wired" and "Red Herring" in the IT industry, as well as the old traditional media "Fortune" and "The New York Times" , intensive exposure and fierce controversy, the popularity of the iVie browser skyrocketed, and while continuing to paralyze Microsoft, it also brought huge pressure to Netscape.

On October 1, 1995, Netscape held a monthly board meeting, at which Jim Clark, Netscape's largest shareholder, asked Mark Anderson, "Mark, how is our Navigator 2.0 development going?"

"It's a mess, less than 15 percent of the work plan has been completed so far. ”

"It's been more than half a month since the EB standard was announced, and you've only completed less than 15% of the work? iVie is 90% complete!"

"Jim, we hired too many programmers in the first half of the year, which seriously delayed the development schedule. ”

At this point, one of the directors couldn't take it anymore and rebuked: "Ridiculous! There are more programmers, shouldn't the development progress be faster?"

"We hired more than 500 programmers in a few months, who came from all over the country, with very different development capabilities and programming concepts, a lack of coordination between teams, and communication time even longer than typing, which was very inefficient. ”

"iVie 2.0 has thousands of programmers from all over the world, how can they be so efficient?"

"The core development team of iVie 2.0 is only 18 people, each of whom is a leader in the open source community, these people are all fans of Autumn, the concept is the same, there is no internal friction, the cooperation efficiency is very high, and there are thousands of open source enthusiasts to help them test and fix bugs, and the development progress is of course very fast. Marc Anderson was a little haggard, explaining: "The biggest trouble in developing a browser is not a technical problem, but a compatibility problem, and in this regard, open source software has an advantage that closed-source software cannot match, they fixed more than 400 bugs in 15 days, and they are updating the version almost every hour, and we simply can't do it." ”

"Can we take their source code as a sample and write our own program in a different programming language?"

"No, I have consulted a lawyer, the software is the same, even if the text is different, as long as the ideas are similar, it will be considered infringement. ”

"Netscape is behind Microsoft in marketing and Snapdragon in technology, and if this continues, the company's stock price will fall. ”

"Why don't we raise the purchase price and talk to Autumn again. ”

KPCB partner John Doerr, who is also a director of Netscape, had not spoken just now, and then shook his head and said: "This Chinese has a big appetite, and he needs at least $1 billion before he will consider a merger." ”

"What?!"

"Is he crazy?"

Netscape's stock price rebounded for a few days after the 3C meeting, and then fell again, and is currently barely maintained at about $2 billion, $1 billion is equivalent to half of the equity, if the merger is at this price, Du Qiu will surpass Jim Clark and become the largest shareholder of Netscape, with his outstanding technology and rising prestige, he is fully capable of turning Netscape into a part of Snapdragon, not Snapdragon into a part of Netscape.

"John, are you really going to invest in Snapdragon at a $1 billion valuation?"

"Because Netscape and Snapdragon are in competition, I didn't participate in their funding plans, I just heard from my colleagues. John Doerr tapped his fingers lightly on the conference table and asked Mark Anderson, "Another Chinese...... It's like Dylan, who once boasted to Steve Keys that Autumn is working on a new project worth tens of billions of dollars in addition to iVie 2.0, you know what it is?"

"I don't know. ”

"So from the perspective of professional fields, what kind of direction do you think it will be?"

Mark Anderson rubbed his forehead and said after pondering for a moment: "It may be a search engine, there are more and more pages on the Internet now, and if you want to find accurate information, you need the help of a search engine. ”

"I think so too. John Doerr bowed slightly, looked around the conference room, and proposed, "Forget about Snapdragon, let's go buy a search engine company." ”

John Durr is one of the four kings of Silicon Valley venture capital, in the 80s he invested in the fledgling Lotus, SUN and Compaq and other companies, at the beginning of this year is even more discerning, when no one else is optimistic, won a 25% stake in Netscape at a price of $5 million, more than 100 times in just a few months, has an unquestionable authority in the investment field, so the proposal quickly got everyone agreed, and began to discuss which search engine company to acquire.

Du Qiu didn't know that because of Chen Dayou's braggart, Netscape embarked on a different development path from the original time and space, in fact, what he developed was not a search engine, but iMail, an email system that can be used in a browser, and the company's secret weapon to value $1 billion - if it was a search engine, the valuation would have to be increased by 0 to satisfy Du Qiu.

While the research and development of iVie 2.0 is making great progress, although Du Qiu is in Silicon Valley, he still has to face all kinds of domestic investors, some of whom are from the city, some from the province, and some from Pujiang and Beijing.

These dozen subsidiaries did not bring much money to Snapdragon, but the fixed assets increased several times, and all kinds of invisible benefits that only the party knows how to use are immeasurable, correspondingly, Du Qiu split the shares into AB shares, and the shareholding decreased from 65% to 54%, and the voting rights did not fall but rose, reaching 75%, still firmly controlling the company's development direction.

On October 10, 1995, the "Cruel Angel" plan was successfully completed, and iVie 2.0 was officially released, this time using the strategy of Google's operation of chrome in the original time and space, and released two versions, one is a stable version for ordinary users, closed source, updated monthly, and the other is a pioneer version for professional users, open source, updated at any time, which can not only reduce the trouble caused by fragmentation, but also unite third-party developers, which is conducive to the promotion of various private goods in the future.

Benefiting from a month of extensive coverage, iVie 2.0 was a hit with more than 100,000 downloads in 24 hours, bringing down the company's servers and crashing the campuses of Stanford and Berkeley, which provide offloaded downloads.

"When will your iMail be ready?"

"It should be about the end of the month. ”

"The sooner the better, the sooner the better!" Chen Dayou looked like a bitter and hateful little daughter-in-law, and reminded: "Du Qiu, the company must raise funds next month, otherwise let alone build an email server, even the salaries of employees will not be paid." ”

"The $4 million I got from Microsoft was spent so quickly?"

"It cost 1 million to invest in Yahoo, 1.2 million to rent an office and buy a server, 950,000 yuan in salaries for August, September and October, and ......," Chen Dayou reported his expenses as if he were a treasurer, and finally concluded: "If it weren't for the more than $300,000 advertising dollars that iCard can bring in every month, we would have gone bankrupt a long time ago." ”

After he finished settling the accounts, he also felt a little short of breath and asked, "Du Qiu, do you think we can really raise $1 billion?"

"Yes, you can rest assured. ”