The current AOL (AOL) in the entire Eastern Bloc can only be regarded as a subsidiary of a small generation. It just completed a new round of financial evaluation, and the company's total valuation is only $80 million.

However, the position of AOL in Li Xuan's mind is not ordinary, and it is an important part of Li Xuan's entire Internet plan. In another time and space, 1994 is known as the first year of the commercialization of the Internet in the United States.

Because this year there was a graphical browser called "Navigator", which was developed by a small company called Netscape. From now on, ordinary people can finally easily retrieve the information they want on the Internet through a browser.

Until then, the Internet was not a foreign thing to many Americans. Among them, the online service companies represented by AOL have made indelible contributions to the early germination of the Internet in the United States.

The brightest moment of AOL in another time and space was in 2000, when the dot-com bubble was at its highest. It acquired Time Warner for $183 billion. Ten years before this shocking merger, AOL was actually a small company with total assets of less than $100 million.

AOL's profit model is not the same as that of the mainstream Internet wave companies in the 90s. Internet companies, led by Yahoo, rely on providing free content to users to increase traffic and gather popularity for their websites, so as to attract businesses to advertise on their websites and make profits through advertising fees.

AOL, on the other hand, builds an independent virtual community, provides various services in the community, and then makes money by charging users membership fees. AOL's model was a huge success throughout the 90s, and while companies such as Yahoo were still burning money for traffic, AOL had relied on its huge user base to create a steady stream of huge profits.

But AOL's model only worked in the early days of the Internet. Web retrieval is not convenient enough, free content is not rich enough, and its one-stop fool service is competitive enough.

And as the Internet becomes more and more colorful in the 21st century, the decline of the American online model becomes inevitable. But at least during the wild period of the Internet, AOL has opened up a right path to growth!

Of course, the AOL company established by the Eastern Bloc in this time and space has nothing to do with AOL in another time and space. However, it is blessed by Li Xuan's rebirth aura. Its future development will only be more brilliant than that company with the same name and surname in another time and space!

"Mr. Li, compared to our competitors such as computer service companies and Yuanquan Company, we charge the lowest service fees. At $29.9 per month, it's just as much as other companies charge for dial-up access. In other words, the online service we provide is actually free!

By the end of this year, our total number of users is likely to exceed 1 million, and we will become the second largest online service provider in the United States after computer service companies!"

MCI's celebratory reception wasn't over yet. After the departure of MCI's CEO, Mr. Hyde Walker, Derek Owen couldn't wait to report to Li Xuan on AOL's performance growth data.

AOL's biggest competitor, Computer Services, began offering online services as early as 979. Relying on the advantage of being the first to enter the market, the other party has been deeply engaged in this field for 8 years, and has only accumulated 1.1 million users. It only took AOL three years to catch up with the computer services company. This made Owen, the CEO of the company, inevitably look a little smug when he introduced the situation in front of Li Xuan, the big boss.

However, the number of AOL users has grown by leaps and bounds. In fact, it was bought in exchange for huge losses. Since the establishment of AOL, the net profit has been as high as negative 100 million US dollars in just three years. You have to know that users pay $29.9 per month. It's just enough for AOL to pay the telecom operator for renting the network. On the other hand, AOL provides news and information, games and other content on the "American Online Community", which requires spending money to buy copyrights.

For example, although Li Xuan is the largest shareholder of NBC Broadcasting, this does not mean that AOL can obtain the copyright of various news information from the other party for free. NBC is at most looking at Li Xuan's face, giving AOL a certain price concession and the right of first refusal. Reasonable accommodation.

After tying up the Oscars with "Sleepless Nights in Hong Kong" at the beginning of the year and the recent two rounds of hype for his bestseller "The Road Ahead", the word "Internet" has not left the national public's field of vision for more than half a year.

Affected by this, the number of Internet users in the United States has ushered in a round of skyrocketing this year. It's also to be expected. And Li Xuan has worked so hard, so naturally he must eat the biggest piece of fat. Therefore, as early as the beginning of the year, AOL launched a timely fee discount measure, from the original $49.9 per month to $29.9 in one go.

"Let's talk about the progress of the acquisition of Yuanquan Company!" "Using low prices to seize the market is Li Xuan's established strategy for AOL, and what he is most concerned about now is whether AOL can expand its market share as soon as possible.

"We made a $3 million offer to the board of directors of Fountainhead, and the latest response has been reduced from $5 million to $3.7 million!

With 120,000 users, we will soon be able to overtake computer services companies to become the nation's largest online service provider!" Owen immediately explained the progress of the negotiations.

"It's inevitable that there will be a lot of dreams at night, we don't need to worry about the small disagreement of two or three hundred thousand dollars, and agree to the other party's offer as soon as possible!" Li Xuan shook his head and said, he didn't even care about the loss of $100 million from the AOL company, let alone the difference in the offer of hundreds of thousands of dollars, "Is it possible for us to acquire a computer service company?"

If AOL were able to swallow up the computer services company, it would be able to completely dominate the computer online services market in the United States. In addition to AOL and computer services, Yuanquan has 120,000 users and is the third largest company in the industry, while the remaining small companies have customers of less than 100,000, which is not worth mentioning at all.

"We had an offer of $30 million. Asked a computer service company to buy their online business units, but was rejected by them! They have recently been ambitious to enter the online services market in Europe and Japan.

So unless we offer a very attractive price to buy the computer services company as a whole directly from its parent company, H&R-Block, it's going to be very difficult to achieve our goal! $520 million was spent on the purchase of a computer services company in 1980. If we want to acquire it now, it will cost at least six or seven billion dollars!" Owen shook his head and sighed.

The computer service company is not just an online service provider, and the acquisition of the other party at a cost of six or seven billion dollars is a bit more than worth the loss for both the Eastern Group and AOL. Instead of wasting a lot of money on acquiring a large number of useless assets of a computer service company, it is better to spend money directly on opening up new markets!

As soon as Li Xuan heard the other party's introduction, he immediately lost interest in the computer service company. He paused and said, "The Internet market in the United States has just begun to sprout, and now is the first step in a long marathon!"

At this time, it doesn't make much sense to pursue the number of users. What is more important for us to do a good job in building our own soft power. When the wave of Internet commercialization begins, it's time to really start making efforts!

Most of the domestic netizens in another time and space have never heard of the Navigator browser. In fact, before Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser was bundled with Windows for free, Navigator's share of the U.S. browser market once exceeded 90%.

Microsoft has suppressed Netscape and its "Navigator" through unfair competition. But it was also targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice, and was almost torn apart in the trial of the century. After the death of the "Navigator", there is actually a trace of blood that has been handed down, and the Firefox browser, which has many users later, is actually the follow-up open source version of the "Navigator".

In fact, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Navigator also have some origins. Both competitors were actually developed by the same person. The Supercomputer Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosts one of the world's first World Wide Web services.

So a part-time student named Mark Anderson worked part-time at the Supercomputer Center. It was decided to design a graphical browser for the World Wide Web to facilitate the retrieval of information on the World Wide Web server in the computer center.

With the approval of his supervisor, he set up a development team and wrote a graphical browser called Mosaic. The intellectual property of the browser naturally belonged to the Supercomputer Center of the University of Champaign, which later resold it to a commercial company.

After graduating from the University of Champagne, Mark Anderson went to Silicon Valley to find a job. Later, at the instigation of Clark, the founder of Silicon Valley Graphics, the two co-founded Netscape. And after the navigator browser developed by Netscape became popular overnight, Bill Gates reacted.

But although Microsoft is a software empire, it is actually very paradigmatic in the Internet field. In order to improve the development schedule, Microsoft simply took the company that bought the intellectual property of the "Mosaic" browser. I bought the "Mosaic" and developed the Internet Explorer browser on this basis.

However, because of the appearance of Li Xuan's butterfly, Bill Gates's Microsoft empire is no longer possible, and naturally there will be no more browser wars in another time and space.

Therefore, after the World Wide Web technical group of the Oriental Research Institute developed the 1.0 version of the graphical browser, Li Xuan simply named it "Navigator". This is a kind of tribute to the great but short-lived Netscape company in another time and space!

If the operating system is the link between people and computers, then the browser is the link between computers and the Internet. I have control of the browser market, and whoever controls the keys to the Internet world. It is precisely because of such a critical position of the browser that Bill Gates and Microsoft in another time and space will react and desperately promote their Internet Explorer.

Li Xuan's original plan was to set up a new software company based on Internet Explorer. When the time comes, let Dongfang System Software come forward to buy the new company, so as to increase the proportion of Dongfang Group's shareholding in Dongfang System Software.

The personal computer operating system is in the transition from the DOS era to the graphical era, and the fact that the Oriental system software can dominate the world in the previous DOS era does not mean that it can smoothly extend the hegemony to the graphical era.

Therefore, in order to obtain the most extensive support from computer manufacturers, Dongfang System Software has introduced a number of companies with the highest computer sales to become its new shareholders. Oriental Group's stake in Oriental System Software has also fallen to only 37.5%.

The Oriental System Software Company has already started its IPO action, and after it issues a part of the new shares to complete the listing, the shareholding ratio of the Oriental Group can only be maintained at about 30% at most. This will naturally greatly weaken Li Xuan's control over Dongfang System Software Company.

Now that most of the other shareholders are new entrants, it is naturally impossible to jump out so eagerly and challenge the control of Oriental Group over Oriental System Software. But as time goes on, companies like IBM, whose shareholding is second only to the Eastern bloc, is likely to make some small moves in the shadows.

In another time and space, almost all of the world's computer manufacturers are working for Microsoft and Intel. And the same situation is certainly inevitable in this life, as the computer industry becomes more and more competitive, the profits of hardware manufacturers will become thinner and thinner.

And only the operating system and processor in a monopoly position can still reap a lot of profits. The Oriental Research Institute was Li Xuan's spasm and was never prepared to bring in external capital. Therefore, when the time comes, the Oriental System Software Company will become the focus of everyone's competition!

Before selling computers becomes unprofitable, it is necessary for Lixuan to restore his shareholding in Dongfang System Software Company! The browser is undoubtedly the first killer application in the future Internet era. But the value of a browser alone is not enough to be comparable to the current Oriental System Software Company!

According to Wall Street's valuation of Oriental System Software, it is likely to become a behemoth with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion when it goes public. If Li Xuan wants to increase his holdings by 10%, that means he needs to inject a $1.1 billion asset. And it's impossible to make a browser worth more than $1 billion in a short period of time.

Therefore, Li Xuan decided to simply put the "Navigator" browser into the AOL company, and then put the entire AOL company into the Oriental System Software Company in the future! )