There is often a misconception that copycats are a common thing only in China's software industry.

The truth is that if you judge whether it is a copycat only from the homogeneity of software functions, then copycats are popular all over the world. This is true for China, and the same is true for the United States.

After all, what does it mean that the software I wrote looks like yours in the eyes of programmers? Your software is encrypted when it is released, which can prevent decompilation, and I can't copy your source code. If I use my own code to achieve the exact same functionality as your software, what is the infringement?

Of course, if you hire someone from a competitor and steal the source code, this kind of thing will be condemned by the whole industry. This is **naked plagiarism, and it is also **naked commercial espionage, which is completely different from the aforementioned reverse imitation nature.

The main reason why China's software copycats look particularly strict is that there are one or two giants in China that are good at grabbing and analyzing user habits. They like to do the kind of thing where dark acne scans the user's computer, finds the rising star, and then directly uses their size advantage in the bud to crush and eliminate the rising star.

Fortunately, in 03 years, there was no giant in China that could do "dark acne scanning the computers of most users in the country and analyzing user preferences" - who made this era, the concept of large number jù has not yet appeared, and the technical basis of large number jù application is not yet mature. The imitation rhythm of the industry is inevitably a few beats slower than that of later generations.

Therefore, Gu Mojie is lucky.

The free input method he wrote, in the first three months after it went public, was almost not noticed by his peers, at least not enough to provoke them to immediately imitate the ** Cheng dù. Everyone is waiting to see the user response of Gu Mojie's input method, what the number of downloads is, and then go through the company's internal process and apply for the project...... This lack of attention bought time for Gu Mojie.

Until now,Trying to copycat and surpass him began to show up,Considering the difficulty of Gu Mojie's input method,It is estimated that competitors spend a maximum of two months on programming and testing,Push it back,Gu Mojie can calculate,The other party should officially start writing code in May or June。 At that time, the number of users of his input method should have crossed the threshold of five million.

……

Gu Mojie communicated with Zhou Lixin a lot of questions on QQ, and also inquired about all aspects of the information himself, and quickly made it clear about the current situation of the problems he was facing.

The software that copied him, called "Swift Input Method", is a product developed by a new IT company called Swift Network Technology in Guangdong Province.

The company was established for a year, there is nothing awesome in the performance, and there has been no very influential software, before it was nothing more than a download tool that supports breakpoint connection, but the promotion effect is not good, and now the popular Internet ants can not compete at all.

However, looking at the information that can be found on the Internet and officially announced, it seems that this company has attracted investment from NetEase, which is also an Internet giant in Guangdong Province, and NetEase is one of its shareholders behind it, and there should be some other channels for capital injection.

The rules of operation of Baidu bidding ranking are as follows:For example, Gu Mojie has a minimum of 1 Mao 9 a click,Buy the top of the keyword "Pinyin input method",So as long as no one competes to grab it,Others search for this word on Baidu,And click in,Gu Mojie only needs to give 1 Mao 9 to Baidu,As a promotion fee。 If you're only willing to pay a guaranteed 7 cents for a click, that's fine, but Baidu will only advance your search results from the normal search results by a certain rank, but it doesn't guarantee that you will be pinned to the top.

But that's ideal, and it's so cheap when no one competes with you for this keyword. If there is a peer to compete, and the other party comes out with 2 cents and 5, then your 1 cents and 9 will be ranked below others. If you add more weight, pack a bunch of more than 3 cents, more than 4 cents, more than 5 cents...... If you occupy a large number of seats in front of you, then even if you can't squeeze Gu Mojie's link out of the homepage, you can squeeze out many rankings.

When most domestic netizens search for the software they need, they are still stuck in the era of "Baidu search - and then directly click on the first link - download", this kind of competition is enough to deal a blow to Gu Mojie.

If Gu Mojie wants to fight back in this field, the only way is to increase his bidding on Baidu, from the original 1 cents and 9 cents to seven or eight cents per click, or even more expensive, overshadowing the other party. In that case, Gu Mojie's rate of burning advertising expenses will also skyrocket by three or four times.

No matter how you look at it, the other party's method doesn't seem to be just to promote its own software, but it intends to further block Gu Mojie, and there is a suspicion of "killing 3,000 enemies and injuring 800 yourself".

If it is just an Internet company that has just debuted and received the initial angel investment or Series A financing, it should not burn money to target competitors.

couldn't find more on the Internet, so Gu Mojie had to call Zhou Lixin again and ask Zhou Lixin to find his friends in the Internet advertising industry and ask the old story of the "Swift Technology" company. For people in the industry, this kind of information should not be confidential, and people can always ask about it.

Within fifteen minutes, Zhou Lixin's phone came back: "I promised two thousand red envelopes and inquired." The technical backbone of the other company, which is a few engineers who came back from Silicon Valley to start a business, started out just writing and downloading software, and had no background.

But the company later pulled an investor, it is said that he is a rich second generation, the son of a major shareholder of NetEase, who has just graduated from Shenzhen University to invest, and his father gave him a lot of money to toss. Because of the amount of money,Obtained a considerable control of the company,Hard twisting the rapid technological transformation to get the new input method that is just heating up。 ”

Gu Mojie was stunned for a moment, and said no wonder in his heart: it turned out to be a rich second-generation rich man with a lot of money to burn bags, so he had to pick a niche software field that currently looks a little soft persimmon in China and compete for the first place in China. Otherwise, the input method is such a thing, although the operating cost of the maintenance period is not high, but the profit model is also a problem, who will be so savage to burn money into it.

But since he came, he had to deal with it, and he would see the move. So far, he hasn't scared anyone, a second generation who is so poor that he only has money left, he doesn't believe it.

In terms of funds, you can't find any loopholes for the other party for the time being, so start with technology first. In order to know himself and his opponent, Gu Mojie downloaded the "Swift Input Method" copied from him, and slowly tested it, wanting to find out the performance of the other party.