No. 143 kick Baidu

Tencent was unable to break through the layers of containment in the Spring and Autumn Period, and internal cracks gradually formed under the declining trend, and Ma Huateng was finally forced to end the strategy of confrontation with the Spring and Autumn in the form of reducing equity.

This 6% equity is Tencent's land compensation for land cession.

In terms of sincerity, the sincerity of Tencent's founder team is still enough.

However, Wei Dongsheng is not eager to profit from Tencent's equity appreciation, and if the status of Chunteng Games cannot be guaranteed, there is no essential difference between 15% and 21%.

Zeng Li Qingfu also assured Wei Dongsheng: "Tencent has made a huge mistake by jointly operating "QQ Tang" and "QQ Fantasy Country" independently with Chunteng Games. In order to prevent Tencent's management from acting alone and wantonly harming the interests of shareholders, MIH proposed to implement a one-vote veto system, and the Tencent team must obtain the understanding of both Chunqiu and MIH for decisions involving strategic direction and large sums of money. Any decision that Spring and Autumn feels is detrimental to its own interests will be voted down, and Tencent must give it up unconditionally. ”

Wei Dongsheng nodded.

If such conditions are the case, it is worth talking about.

Wei Dongsheng kindly replied to Zeng Liqing, Zhang Zhidong and others: "Spring and Autumn agrees in principle to the one-vote veto system, and is also willing to negotiate on equity adjustment. ”

No matter how declining Tencent is, it is also a company with a market value of billions of Hong Kong dollars, and 6% equity is also a change involving hundreds of millions of capital, and trivial negotiations must be carried out to bind each other's rights and obligations. Wei Dongsheng's statement is not the end of the confrontation between Spring and Autumn and Tencent, but the start of the process of negotiation and negotiation to resolve the matter.

Wei Dongsheng seemed to be satisfied with the 6% stake when he expressed his position, but in actual operation, the appetite of the Spring and Autumn interest group did not stop at the 6% stake.

When there are too many people, there will be mixed thoughts.

Just like the system of the state, officials are officials, and the state is the state, which is as strong as the Jiuge elders of the top political clubs, and they cannot wantonly rape the interests of the state with their personal will. Huaguo is a large collective of 1.3 billion people, and Spring and Autumn Group is a small collective of 50,000 employees.

The Spring and Autumn Group is currently in the shadow of Wei Dongsheng, and Wei Dongsheng said that to the east, the Spring and Autumn Group must go east. However, where Wei Dongsheng was noncommittal, and where Wei Dongsheng was unwilling to expend energy, the Spring and Autumn Group had already made its own interest decisions.

It's like Tencent, Wei Dongsheng regards it as a corner and doesn't pay much attention to it. Whether it is 15% equity or 21% equity, it is enough to keep the auxiliary force of Chunteng Game. However, Wei Dongsheng doesn't care about 15% or 21% equity, but the collective will of Spring and Autumn Group does. Wei Dongsheng ignored Tencent again, Tencent is also an Internet company with great potential, if there is an opportunity to tear a piece of fat on it, how can Spring and Autumn Group be willing to give up.

As a result, Wei Dongsheng started negotiations lightly, but what MIH and Tencent were waiting for was the long-prepared swords, guns, swords, and crossbows prepared by the Spring and Autumn negotiation team. For the founder team such as Ma Huateng, Zeng Liqing, and Zhang Zhidong, Tencent is their cause and their hard work; For MIH, Tencent is a financial investment, and they want to make money by increasing Tencent's equity; For Wei Dongsheng, the shareholding of Tencent is to keep Chunteng Games and the aileron of Chunqiu Network; For the Spring and Autumn Group, Tencent is a mass of cutting board fat that does not cut white.

Tencent's founding team attaches the most importance to Tencent's future, and is willing to compromise in many aspects for Tencent's survival. MIH cares more about whether Tencent is worth being bullish on, and if Tencent has no hope, no matter how much equity it has, it will be a bunch of numbers. After a series of fierce confrontations and complex exchanges of interests such as the four-dimensional space and Tencent's abandonment of the development of instant messaging tools and Tencent's abandonment of the development of online game business, the final equity ratio obtained by the Spring and Autumn Group was far beyond Wei Dongsheng's imagination.

As a result of the preliminary negotiations, after the adjustment of Tencent's shareholding, the proportion of outstanding shares on the exchange was reduced to 20%, Spring and Autumn held 35% of the shares, MIH held 25% of the shares, and Tencent's founder team and management held 20% of the shares, making Spring and Autumn the largest shareholder of Tencent.

Spring and Autumn accounted for 20% of the increase in shareholding, 6% from Ma Huateng, and the rest from MIH transfers and repurchases of outstanding shares. Since everyone is betting on the future rather than the present, MIH and Tencent management have asked Spring and Autumn to buy their shares at a premium. Considering that Tencent's share price has recently hovered between HK$3 and HK$4, Chunqiu announced a double premium, that is, an increase in the 20% stake at HK$8 per share, a total of HK$2.688 billion.

Spring and Autumn also put forward its own conditions, except for the hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars to repurchase tradable shares immediately put on the market, the remaining about 2 billion Hong Kong dollars, all of which are postponed to pay: if a formal contract is signed before October 2005, Spring and Autumn will pay one-sixth by October 2005, one-third by October 2006, one-third by October 2007, and the last one-sixth by October 2008.

Although there are still many trivial details that need to be negotiated in a see-saw manner, the general direction of Spring and Autumn and Tencent's ice release has been set.

The conflict of interests is gone, and the atmosphere is harmonious.

Tencent's 35% stake, Spring and Autumn Network increased its stake to 5%; Spring & Autumn Group directly holds 5%; Spring and Autumn Software increased its holdings to 10%; Ma Huateng's 6% stake was directly transferred to Dongsheng Holdings, and with the previous 9% stake, Wei Dongsheng indirectly controlled 15% of Tencent's equity, more than Zhang Zhidong and Ma Huateng combined.

Wei Dongsheng despises Tencent's status so much, but strangely becomes Tencent's largest individual shareholder, which is really unpredictable. When the equity adjustment contract was finally signed, Wei Dongsheng, as the largest natural person shareholder of Tencent, came to Shenpeng again.

At the celebration dinner that night, Ma Huateng also attended, and accompanied by Zeng Liqing to meet Wei Dongsheng. Ma Huateng usually has a poker face that is not angry and arrogant, and he is quite stunned when he talks in private. Perhaps considering that the atmosphere was a little awkward, Zeng Liqing deliberately changed the topic to start: "I heard that the Spring and Autumn Search is also going to the United States to be listed?" ”

Wei Dongsheng: "No. ”

Zeng Liqing was surprised: "Is this news misinformation? ”

Wei Dongsheng: "It's just a strategy to snipe Baidu's listing." ”

Zeng Li Qing and Ma Huateng were awe-inspiring.

In Wei Dongsheng's planning, holding shares in Tencent is the leftovers, and the Spring and Autumn Search is the main battlefield.

The Spring and Autumn Public Relations Department solved the constraints of the State Council Information Office, and immediately invested heavily in the search field to burn money to seize the market.

In the first half of 2004, Baidu accounted for 29.1% of the market share in the Huaguo search engine market, ranking first. 3721, Yahoo, Yisou and other Yahoo series, accounting for 26.6% of the market share, ranking second; Google ranks third with a 19.7% market share; Spring & Autumn Search has a market share of 13.1%, ranking fourth.

After a year of online and offline money burning, the search engine market in the summer of 2005 has changed greatly, and the spring and autumn search has made great strides, from 13.1% to 57.5%, ranking first; Google slipped slightly, with a 16.5% market share, ranking second; Baidu seems to have halved from 29.1% to 15.5%; Due to the contradictions between Zhou Hongyi and Yahoo inside, and the advance of Spring and Autumn Search outside, the situation is even more miserable than Baidu, plummeting to 6.4%.

In just one year, the Spring and Autumn Search burned money to the first place.

By the middle of 2005, the characteristics of the search engine market were clear. HC Search, or Zhongsou, which boasted of being the No. 1 Chinese search between 2003 and 2004, has been quietly forgotten, its cooperation model with portals is not recognized by the capital market, and its market share under the new standard is also minimal. The real players in the field of search engines are only four heavyweights such as Chunqiu, Baidu, Google, and Yahoo. Among them, Yahoo is in the stage of internal and external troubles, the rivers are declining, and the decline is very obvious.

Spring and Autumn, Baidu, Google, the three search engines, all have distinctive characteristics.

Spring and Autumn replaced Baidu's former position, and it was called Spring and Autumn in China and Google in foreign countries. In order to crack down on Baidu's brand reputation, given that most of Baidu's user traffic comes from pirated MP3 music and pirated networks, Spring and Autumn has driven Spring and Autumn Literature to sue Baidu for infringement on behalf of the Internet camp on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has deliberately focused on this aspect of propaganda to completely stigmatize Baidu, and simply and rudely establish a new image for Baidu: illegally looking for Baidu.

Spring and Autumn is used at home, Google is used abroad, and Baidu is illegally found.

After the deliberate guidance of the Spring and Autumn Propaganda Department, this sentence has become the subjective impression of Chinese netizens on the three search engines of Spring and Autumn, Google, and Baidu. In fact, Spring and Autumn Search, as Wei Dongsheng's most important cause, not only is its technical background not weaker than Google, but also has always been maintained at a level that surpasses Google's half a year to a year. However, search engines have the characteristics of the service industry, and the quality is linked to user big data, and the larger the user scale and the wider the user sample, the better the user's subjective experience.

Google has a huge market support in Europe and the United States, and has rich experience in handling English searches, and the user experience in this area naturally surpasses that of spring and autumn searches; Of course, Spring and Autumn Search also has its own advantages, the user experience when dealing with Chinese search easily crushes Google, domestic Google loyal users, when searching for Chinese information unsuccessfully, more and more people begin to try to switch to Spring and Autumn search.

Spring and Autumn Search burns money to buy traffic, and has the ability to retain users, so Baidu naturally has no place to fight back.

As mentioned earlier, from 2001 to 2004, Baidu was very poor and had no capital to play a money-burning game with Spring and Autumn Search. In June 2004, Baidu raised its third fundraising, receiving only $15 million from eight venture capitalists including DFJ and Google. With this scale of financing, Baidu will come to two more rounds, and don't want to play a money-burning game with Spring and Autumn Search. Baidu wants to play the money-burning game, and the only trick is to go public in the United States to find the wronged boss and provide funds.

In fact, as early as the third financing, Baidu had already begun to prepare for the second half of 2005 to go public in the United States to make money. Because it has been poor for a long time, Baidu has a very low valuation of itself, and its IPO plan only dares to raise $100 million.

However, in order to stifle Baidu, Spring and Autumn Search did not want to get $100 million.