Steve Mitnick said, "Yes, but he said it was too expensive and you wouldn't agree to it." But I don't think the most important thing you need right now is money, right?"

"There is really no shortage of money," Eric said with a smile, although the Firefly Group has just issued a huge bond of $8 billion, but as long as Eric needs money, I believe that all banks in the United States will not refuse to give Eric a huge loan: "But what we lack is time, the computer operating system has been developed for more than ten years, and there are many mature operating systems on the market." And it's obviously easier to develop a new web browser than to develop an entirely new operating system, bypassing our software patents. Now that we've achieved unrivalled superiority in this area, it would be unwise to give up our strengths in other industries. ”

In fact, the most important reason why Eric didn't say and couldn't say it is that Microsoft will launch the epoch-making Windows95 operating system next year, and the release of Win95 means that Microsoft will unify the operating system. If the time could have been advanced by five years, Eric would have agreed to Steve Mitnick's proposal to develop a web-based operating system using the advantages of browser software. Netscape, which developed the first successful graphical interface browser in the original space-time, once proposed an operating system plan based on Netscape Browser, and this plan was stillborn precisely because of the rise of Win95, and later Google also planned to develop a free operating system based on Google Chrome, but after the news was released. Again, there is no follow-up. Visible after Win95. It's impossible to shake up Microsoft's position in the PC era.

Steve Mitnick nodded in disappointment: "Seemingly, what you say makes a lot of sense." ”

Eric smiled, although Steve Mitnick is a technical genius, but after all, he is a bit idealistic, but such a person is more pure, like the two founders of Google in the original plane, Eric can conclude that at least Steve Mitnick will focus more on technology research and development. And will not go to great lengths to make money. In fact, Eric thinks that the more people who concentrate on a certain thing, the more they can gain.

"Actually, you should be able to guess," Eric waited for a while, and then took the initiative to say: "I came this time to integrate all three companies and establish Yahoo Network, IE and Hotmail will also be officially renamed Yahoo Browser and Yahoo Mail, Steve, are you interested in being the CEO of this company?"

"No, no, no. Eric," Steve Mitnick shook his head sharply, "You could let me sit on a computer screen for the rest of my life." But if you want me to sit in my office or conference room every day and deal with all that messy chores, like my company managers, I'm going to go crazy. After a pause, Steve Mitnick added, "You'd better let Ian come, he's obviously better at running the company, maybe I can be Yahoo's CTO." ”

Eric was a little surprised, then smiled, "I always thought you were a lot like the other Steve I knew, but now it seems that you two are completely different people. ”

The other Steve, of course, is Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a very controlling man, while the guy in front of him was more inclined to be a technocratic who didn't listen to anything outside the window.

"You mean Steve Jobs, right?" said Mitnick, steering the wheel over a white van and following behind the two cars in front of him, with a look on his face reminiscence. I bought a Macintosh when I was at Penn, and it was a great PC at the time, with a graphics user platform, the first multimedia features, and an 8MHz processor speed, all of which were far superior to the IBM personal computers of the time, but unfortunately after Steve Jobs left, Apple didn't release any good things in all these years. ”

……

More than half an hour later, the three cars stopped in front of a white, six-story office building near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the other side of the Charles River. Steve Mitnick has a very high IQ, but he has no intention of taking charge of a company, and it is counterproductive to force it.

The top five floors of the office building are occupied by three companies, which together employ nearly 900 people, except for a few stores on the ground floor. Led by Steve Mitnick's three supervisors, Eric began to greet the staff of the open workspaces on each floor.

Walking into the office area on the second floor, although the space of this office building is very large, and the density of less than 200 employees on average on each floor is not much, but with a large number of office equipment, personal computers and other equipment, it looks a lot more cluttered and crowded. However, all the employees were in high spirits when they saw Eric, the big boss behind the scenes, and some bold female employees even found a camera and excitedly pulled Eric to take a series of photos.

All the way to a break room on the top floor, Eric sat down at a round table and smiled at the others: "When I first went to Pixar's studio, all of Pixar's employees were in a very shabby and cramped office building, but now Pixar has its own 16-acre office campus in San Francisco's Emeryville." I'm sure you're in your hands with a company that will be far more successful than Pixar in the future, so it's all temporary. ”

The three companies have been burning money for several years and basically have little income, and Steve Mitnick and others certainly don't dare to ask for a better office environment, and since they discovered the growing potential of the three companies, they have even less care about such trivial things as the office environment.

Ian Gnier, who is in charge of browser development, said: "Eric, I think it's already great here. So, let's take a look at the results of IES's development. It's right in my office. It's a genius idea for you to come up with this kind of browser literal translation of language. Once IES is released, I don't think anyone will be able to surpass IE in the browser space. ”

Jeff Locke and Steve Mitnick were eager to hear Ian Gnier mention IES.

Eric smiled and glanced at the dazed Tina Brown, shook his head and smiled: "Not for the time being, everyone has been working for me for more than two years, and you have to show that there is any place in Boston that can accommodate 900 people to start a party together?"

This time it was the turn of the three big men to look blank, and Tina Brown realized that she hadn't signed an employment contract yet. Eric deliberately diverted from this topic, which seemed to involve company secrets, and he didn't mind. As the most famous Vanity Fair party planner after the Oscars, Tina Brown is obviously the most experienced in this kind of thing, and laughs: "Eric, if you want to arrange a party of 900 people at once, it is better to have an open-air party, and the location can only be in the nearby park." I happen to know the phone number of the owner of Boston's biggest party company, and they can contact the party venue on their behalf, but if you need it tonight, contact the party venue urgently. Arranging all kinds of alcohol, food and other facilities need to be added to the money. ”

Eric laughed, "Then please get in touch, Tina." ”

Tina Brown smiled. "Okay, as you wish, boss." After speaking, he looked at Ian Gnier and the others: "Can you lend me a phone?"

"Follow me, ma'am," Ian Gnier said, getting up and leading Tina Brown into an office.

After arranging an evening of staff gatherings and having lunch together, Eric and Tina Brown returned to the hotel together.

In the afternoon, he found a café and showed Tina Brown some of the documents he had prepared, including the long equity incentive contract.

After making sure she had no doubts, Tina Brown finally signed an agreement to join Yahoo as editor-in-chief.

……

Looking down at Massachusetts Avenue downstairs, which connects MIT and Harvard, through the glass windows of the hotel suite, the streets are lined with buildings that are extremely uneven in height and age that drive obsessive-compulsive people crazy, compared to the metropolis with tens of millions of people gathered in the memory of the previous life, the total population of the entire Boston area within a radius of hundreds of kilometers is less than 5 million, and the permanent population of the urban area is only 600,000.

As the boss, he was carried back to the hotel drunk and dazed in front of the enthusiastic employees of the 900 at a party on Boston Common across the Charles River last night, even though he was very careful.

Still a little swollen in his head, Eric looked at the sun-drenched city of Cambridge in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, and stretched his body a little before he walked out of the room to eat in the dining room.

Seeing Eric walk into the dining room, Tina Brown, who was sitting at the window seat to eat, nodded at him, and when Eric walked over, he gestured to his breakfast that he had almost finished, and said with a smile: "Try Boston stuffy baked beans, this kind of food is rarely served in restaurants now, but I didn't expect it to be here." ”

Boston has a nickname that is ten times more adorable than the Big Apple in New York, called Beanie City, which originated from the dish called Boston Stuffy Baked Beans in front of Tina Brown.

Eric was not a Westerner with a sweet tooth, and was insensitive to the syrup-baked food, sat down across from Tina Brown and ordered a random sandwich and a glass of juice.

Tina Brown asked the waitress to take down her utensils, sat patiently across from her and read a copy of today's paper, waited for Eric to finish his breakfast, and said, "Eric, I hope to take over Yahoo's editorial team as soon as possible, and besides, the offices of the three companies I saw yesterday are really a bit scattered, and it is difficult for me to concentrate on working in that environment." I called some real estate agents yesterday and there was an office building on the same street where two floors happened to be vacant because the original company had gone bankrupt and I wanted to be able to rent it. ”

Eric smiled and nodded, "As I said, after you joined, these are all things that are within your authority. But there's a lot more to learn about lately, so there's no need to rush it, and when I leave Boston, you'll be able to do it freely. ”

"A lot of things ......," Tina Brown repeated, laughing, "Like, about yesterday's IES?"

"yes, but that's only part of the story," Eric said. The so-called IES, is the IE browser team and two other companies began to develop a computer language code at the end of last year, the full name is IEScript, this is a new script language different from the traditional programming language, in short, such as IE browser software, this software is mainly written through the C language, but the programmer began to write the C language code can not be recognized by the computer, need to be compiled by special software, converted into a language that the computer can recognize and execute. The new IES scripting language eliminates the need for compilation, allowing web programmers to write the language directly into the web code and have it translated directly by IE Browser. ”

The IEScript scripting language is a design idea proposed by Eric to Ian Gnier according to the idea of JauaScript developed by Netscape Browser Company in memory, and for Ian Gnier, Jeff Locke and Steve Mitnick, these top computer technical talents, Eric's vague points are enough for them to design the new IES scripting language.

Tina Brown didn't know much about computers, but she understood Eric's explanation, but she was still a little puzzled: "Eric, what is the purpose of this scripting language?"

"The main function of this scripting language is to make the original static web page to achieve dynamic changes, to give a simple example, such as web ads, the current Yahoo web page can only simply embed a fixed ad in a variety of different content of the web page, although you can also manually adjust the ad content of different pages, but in the face of millions of web pages in the future, it is unrealistic to achieve complete manual operation. However, with the IES scripting language, we can more accurately place corresponding ads on different content pages, through dynamic code recognition, movie information pages can automatically place movie ads, and sports news pages can appear sports goods ads. At this point, Eric took a sip of juice to give Tina Brown, who is technically blind, some time to think, and continued: "Of course, these are not the most important points, the most important point is that the IES scripting language will be free for web developers, and this language is very simple and easy to learn for those who have a technical foundation, and in one to two years, there will be no other scripting language in the same industry." This plan, combined with the $100 million Yahoo Angel grant I told you about at the beginning to fund the development of content websites, is enough to establish a standard format for IES in web development, and we hold the patents for IES and IE browser, so in the future, all websites designed through the IES scripting language will only be recognized by IE browser, and I think you should be able to realize what this means, right?" )