"See you next year, then?"

"See you next year? We're not talking about our projects this year! ”

"Oh, sorry, I drank too much last night......"

"Alright, don't rush him, he still has a bunch of work on his hands...... What's more, if he really forgets, you can also ask Charlie to go to the set to find him, anyway, he will be filming in New York for the second half of the year......"

On May 4, after Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Bill Gates returned from their CNBC show, Roland, who officially said goodbye to them, boarded the plane and rushed home.

Although he only stayed for three days, for Roland, the gain was definitely greater than the pay.

Because after this shareholders' meeting, the development route of the company under its name will undergo earth-shaking changes.

Previously, under Roland's conception, the whole group, which is walking on the three legs of the Internet, film and television entertainment, and game entertainment, is vigorously developing around the core line, and by the way, it is looking forward to music entertainment and building the whole group into an entertainment kingdom.

Now, everything has changed, and the first thing to cut is the clueless music entertainment.

In Roland's view, the easiest way to develop music entertainment is to acquire one of Sony Music, Universal Music or Warner Music, but this is an absolutely unachievable goal in the short term, and the second easiest way is to sign a guy named Taylor Swift, and after forming a market influence, he will acquire the big three, but this is also a fantasy that cannot be completed in the short term.

After removing these two methods, Roland will not do anything about fighting with music giants head-on.

As a result, in today's environment, Interstellar Records can only be thrown aside to eat ashes.

At most, it is to get the copyright of the movie track invested by itself and release the movie soundtrack.

Therefore, Roland announced that Interstellar Records would be out in advance, and the profits of "My Heart Eternal" would be completely withdrawn.

Unless he can get to the stomach in one step, he will not waste time and money on music entertainment.

Secondly, it is his main business of film and television entertainment.

Roland had previously thought about whether to pull up his own production line while Warcraft Films and Television were cooperating with Disney, Warner, and Universal, because for so many years, Warcraft Films and Television had actually taken the path of a copyright management company.

There is no venue, no equipment, no personnel, and it is a three-no company.

Exactly the same as Berkshire Hathaway's operating philosophy.

If you want to get rid of this, you must buy land to build sheds, purchase equipment, and pull up the team, and at the same time, in order to support people, follow-up projects are essential, because having a team means that there is a cost, and there is no output with input, which is a loss.

Roland's mind is full of projects, and he is not afraid of not being able to pull up the team at all, but there are pros and cons after pulling up the team.

Although independent production can multiply his influence in Hollywood, it will also make the six hearts of those who are used to working with him and waiting for money to be paid, even if Roland doesn't care about these gaps, it seems whimsical to want to use the media resources they control to suppress some things......

If Roland would continue to think about this kind of issue before attending the shareholders' meeting, then now, it is the most correct choice for him to let Warcraft Film and Television maintain the operation of the copyright management company.

Because there are many places to spend money now, there may be a lot of noise.

If he turns his face with the six major ones who control the media at this time, then Roland will no longer want to develop as low-key as before, and under the propaganda of the media, what he does will definitely become a thorn in the side of some people.

In this case, film and television entertainment, which was previously identified as one of the three thighs, must continue to lurk.

In the way of copyright management companies, they can eat the corresponding profits, and at the same time, they also seek the cheapest but quite important public opinion protection from their hands, so that the development of the group company will disappear from the eyes of the public as much as possible.

Of course, freezing the development of Interstellar Records and letting Warcraft Films and Television continue to run in its current posture is actually to not make enemies in Hollywood, which has been solidified by class, and the only promise here is to attack hard in other fields.

First of all, there is Blizzard Entertainment, the content provider.

As the largest content asset in its hands, the development of Blizzard Entertainment cannot afford to lose.

So after returning to Los Angeles, Roland did not rest, but rushed to Irvine non-stop to meet the Big Three.

"I once promised you that I would never interfere with the company's content development, so this time, I didn't talk to you about the research and development of the company's projects, but wanted to know the latest situation and future planning of the company's operation."

Although Roland came abruptly, not long ago, the two sides had contact with the development of StarCraft and Battle.net, and they talked about some corresponding content at that time, and now it is just a systematic collation.

In this way, after learning about Roland's needs, the Blizzard triumvirate took out the batches of materials and piled them on the conference table.

Mike Mohamie, "This year, the main part launched StarCraft, and due to the good sales momentum, the sequel is also well underway, and it is expected to launch Brood War in December. ”

"Battle.net has stabilized at an average of one million people per day, and according to the current development momentum, by the end of the year, when the Brood War is released, it will reach 1.3 million people, and in the whole of '99, we don't have any plans to release it."

"We're going to take StarCraft on hold for a moment after the Brood Wars releases and move on to Warcraft 3, and then ...... Try to run a tournament on Battle.net. ”

"Okay, I'm fine." Roland nodded, "The next Blizzard North?" ”

"Blizzard North has only one porting project this year, and they want to port Diablo to the PS platform."

Alan Adhan picked up the document with the Blizzard North logo, opened it and said: "After the transplant is over, they will formulate a development plan for Diablo 2 according to the situation, but it will not be available to the public until two thousand years at the earliest." ”

Porting Diablo to PlayStation?

Roland glanced at the project arrangement and shook his head in his heart.

In his memory, Blizzard seemed to be born to clash with consoles, and none of the games they developed were suitable for consoles, and they all left the game miserably.

It was precisely because of the fiasco of "Diablo" after logging into PS that the headquarters and Blizzard North tore apart, and the headquarters thought that focusing on PC was the best choice, and Blizzard North did not admit its mistakes.

Then, Blizzard at that time happened to be in the hands of Vivendi, because of the crazy expansion, which led to Vivendi's financial problems, so they kept saying that they wanted to package and sell the game division to EA.

Hearing this news, the North Convenience, which did not want to be deprived of the right to speak about the product, went to the headquarters to negotiate, and because of the disagreement in the concept, the headquarters did not tell them at all that Vivendi gave up selling the game business group because EA's offer was too low, and instead looked for a buyer for Universal, so the asymmetrical source of the North Convenience submitted his resignation to Vivendi, threatening them not to sell Blizzard to EA, but unfortunately, Vivendi did not get used to them and directly let them get out......

On the surface, Vivendi was the last straw that crushed the North, but the ideological dispute between the North and the headquarters was the source of civil strife, and of course, Roland would not care about this kind of thing at all.

After all, at the beginning of that year, the North wanted to make Diablo a turn-based game, and it was with the intervention of the Big Three that they changed the game to a real-time system.

Especially the CG that the protagonist finally inserted the soul stone into his head, it was the handiwork of the three giants of the headquarters, and the north still found out that those three guys dared to do things so crazy after the finished dish came out.

Because of this, even if the two sides have a quarrel, Roland is also on the side of the Big Three.

Without the North, the headquarters can still make out "Warcraft", but after leaving Blizzard, the Big Four of the North can't even come up with a decent work, and they make a judgment.

In addition to the main part and the north, Naughty Dog, which was acquired from Universal, has a sequel "Crash Bandicoot 3" to be released this year.

The rest of the studios, there were no projects for nine or eight years.

In '99, there were Rock Star's "GTA: Vice London 1969" and "GTA2", Bend Studio's "Siphon Warrior", and SuckerPunch's "Rocket", of which "Rocket" was built for the Nintendo 64 platform.

No way, before the acquisition, they signed a contract with Nintendo.

And CDProjekt, which was also acquired?

People are now concentrating on being an agent!

Roland has no objection to these project arrangements, and the only point he wants to emphasize is that the development platform of each company, "the headquarters and the north, only develop PC games." ”

"Naughty Dog, Rock Star, Bend Studios, SuckerPunch, develop games based only on the PS platform."

"If we can, we can actually sign a five-year long-term supply contract with Sony, which ends in 01 year."

"As for CDProjekt, let them set up their own game development team at the same time as they do European publishing."

As the most important content provider, it is natural to grasp it with both hands.

PC is the future, Roland can't let go, and the console, although he promised to be XBox exclusive, but before XBox was born, he couldn't help but make money, right? First of all, through the PS platform, players will continue to strengthen the brand concept of 'Blizzard products are high-quality', and after XBox's engineering machine is taken out, they will take a salary from the bottom of the kettle and give Sony a righteous backstab.

Oh, that's right, it's Capcom!

Now that you've decided to play Sony, you'll have to give them a taste of the sweetness first, and then jump to their opponents.

Only in this way can they have an impact on their revenue in a short period of time.

After all, the three series of "GTA", "Siphon Warrior", and "Crash Bandicoot" have sold five million in a single generation.

A generation's god work is just a little bit, directly cut off one-third and a quarter of it for you, and if it doesn't hurt, then there will be ghosts!

Of course, the radicalization of gaming entertainment is not the end, but only the beginning.

After confirming the company's platform path with the Blizzard triumvirate, Roland asked them about the news of two acquaintances.

"Are you still in touch with Larry Page and Sergey Brin?"

Hearing Roland's question, Frank Pierce immediately said, "They? Didn't they do Google in college? ”

"Huh? The company has already been built? Roland's eyes lit up.

"No, they just got a domain name with the help of Stanford, and now they are doing the same as when we started a business with a credit card, and we paid for a server to build a search engine."

"What, you're interested?" Mike Mohami asked.

"Ah...... No, it's Amazon that's interested in them. Roland smiled and disguised his intentions, "Jeff Bezos found that with the increase in merchants, the merchant search function within the website must be put on the agenda, and the current search engines on the market are too garbage, so they want to hire people to write their own ......"

"Didn't you tell me at the annual meeting the year before last that they wrote a search software for IMDb? So I asked. ”

"Huh?" Alan Adhan understood, and said, "But now that they've registered a domain name, it seems a little inappropriate to poach people again, right?" ”

"It's a little inappropriate." Roland nodded and said approvingly.

But after that, he changed his words again, "But it doesn't matter if you can't recruit people, we can cooperate......"

"You go and ask me, do they lack the capital to start a business? If so...... I can vote ......"

"Of course, like you, I won't interfere with their development ideas, let alone merge them into Amazon, at most I will help them connect when they have needs."

Roland felt that he was very sincere, but after saying that, the faces of the Blizzard triumvirate all flashed with 'weird' smiles.

"Do you really want to vote for them?" Mike Mohami asked.

"Of course, is there any problem?" Roland was weird.

"It's a big problem...... Frank Pierce laughs, "because ...... They're Stanford-backed startups now, and under normal circumstances, they don't accept outside investment......"

That's right!

Like Amazon, Google didn't start out in nothing!

In September '97, Google's domain name was born, and because it was registered with the help of the university, Google naturally came under the umbrella of Stanford.

The so-called Google couldn't get sponsorship in the early days, and the Sun Company saw that they were pitiful, so they gave them 100,000 yuan in entrepreneurship funds, which was also because Andy Betoshem, the founder of the Sun Company, was a graduate of Stanford and one of the sponsors of the Stanford Student Entrepreneurship Office.

Not only that, but after Eric Schmidt, that was also recommended by the Suns.

With his involvement, those venture capital firms were able to enter the market.

And those engineers who came from Bell Labs and lifted Google were forcibly poached by Eric Schmidt by virtue of his relationship with Bell Labs.

Like Amazon, Google simply does not accept foreign capital.

The so-called Pepsi in the early days of entrepreneurship was just an American dream made up for ordinary people.

Companies that can live for decades, and the more they live, the more nourishing they are, all have their own thighs.

After hearing such an explanation, Roland smiled helplessly and shook his head.

If you have money and can't spend it, it's a real pain!

However, this money must be spent!

It's not because investing in Google can make his net worth skyrocket, but if he doesn't invest in Google now, then Microsoft will change from a father to a grandfather, and then become the ancestor of all technology companies under his influence......

"Whether you accept it or not, you can all go and help me get in touch."

"Of course, when you get in touch, you can tell them that in addition to the money, I can also ask Yahoo to sign a long-term contract with them and outsource the search business ......to them for a long time."

Yes!

The fundamental purpose of investing in Google is to squeeze Yahoo dry!

Now that it has been decided to sell all the Yahoo shares in its hands, new alternatives must appear.

Google is the best alternative, and at the same time, it is the only one that allows Microsoft not to cover the sky.

In Roland's previous life, Yahoo made it known that the Internet was free, and after that, Google carried it forward, and Google's market share in the search space was inflated through its partnership with Yahoo.

To put it bluntly, if Yahoo hadn't listed Google as a search engine with a fixed website, then Google might still be successful, but definitely not so fast, just like Yahoo sucked Netscape's blood to achieve crazy expansion, Google also sucked Yahoo's blood before it could become the leader in the search engine field in a short period of time.

But now, the possibility of Google sucking Yahoo's blood is relegated to zero without limit.

The reason is simple, Roland sold a stake in Yahoo to Carl Icahn, and Carl Icahn was helping Microsoft with the acquisition!

If this deal is really done, then Microsoft will never let Google suck Yahoo's blood like in the previous life, and as long as MSN and Yahoo use Microsoft's own search engine, it will ......

Roland believes that Google will definitely explode on the spot!

The three-way chaos war is the opportunity for Google's rise, one-on-one heads-up, it will be beaten out of by Microsoft!

After all, the success of every product is not about whether the product is good or not!

In the face of monopoly, even if consumers are served a piece of, they have to pinch their noses and eat it!

And if Microsoft eats the portal first, and then the search engine, then this kind of company will no longer be able to sanction!

What is too big to fail?

Microsoft, which controls the data of netizens, swallows government orders, and cooperates with the US military, is too big to fail!

Windows+Yahoo！ +MSN+Search Engine ......

Which other company can beat this special code!

A flap of butterfly wings directly turned Bill Gates into the living Napoleon?

Turning Microsoft into a giant that controls both the operating system and the Internet?

Isn't he the most humiliating traverser?

Nothing to do, nothing to do, wanton tossing, Microsoft will eventually become the winner?

Isn't this special code just a meal of fierce operation, a look at the record of zero bar five?

If that's the case, Roland simply won't toss it, and how good it would be to buy stocks and become a rich man!

Because it's a toss and a toss!

It is precisely because of this that Roland, who feels that he has little time, wants Google.

Of course, only he can do this kind of thing by pulling Google.

Because you can see that the search engine is the guy of the future, you can't take out a top stream like Yahoo to make it suck blood!

And those guys who can take Yahoo's top class and let it suck blood, none of them now find that search engines are the future!

After Roland cautiously offered the price of cooperation, the three giants of Blizzard immediately said that they were willing to try their best.

After receiving this assurance, Roland talked to them about the issue of shares.

According to the agreement reached at the time of the acquisition, Blizzard has the right to repurchase 2% of the shares at the original purchase price for each hit game, up to a maximum of 11% per person.

After the successive launch of Warcraft and StarCraft, the three of them each got four percent, for a total of twelve percent.

In the face of this kind of 'free' shares, even if the company has not been listed for the time being, the three of them are still quite happy.

And when he learned that Roland would buy land and build a building for the frantically expanding Blizzard Entertainment, and that he would give them three statues in the center of the square, he said a series of words such as "promise to help you bring Google back", "there are people we know at Stanford", and "we will definitely make them understand that choosing Shouwang Venture Capital is the most correct choice".

'Hey...... That's right......

Roland was pleased with their assurances.

At the same time, he is also full of expectations for the final result.

As long as it can successfully enter Google and squeeze out Yahoo, then Microsoft will not be invincible in the world.