The 108th merger and acquisition, and then the merger and acquisition

Spring and Autumn has no business partnership with hao123, and there is no emotional connection with Li Xingping, who founded hao123, so he sacrificed the most simple and crude premium acquisition routine. Baidu shouted 13 million yuan, and the Spring and Autumn Period directly doubled to 26 million yuan; If Baidu really offered 50 million yuan, Spring and Autumn continued to offer a premium of 75 million yuan; If Baidu dares to make a desperate gamble and pour out $15 million in financing, Spring and Autumn will value hao123 at 180 million yuan. In short, the Spring and Autumn Period desperately piled up Baidu's acquisition costs, and even if it couldn't get hao123 in the end, it would break Baidu's capital chain.

In a word, let's burn money!

In terms of funds, there are 500 million ammunition in the Spring and Autumn Period.

In terms of attitude, Baidu asked Liu Jiping, manager of Shenpeng Branch, to contact hao123; Wei Dongsheng personally dispatched a professional acquisition team to express his sincerity.

At the same time, Li Xingping, the founder of hao123, has its advantages and limitations, and he has never had the subjective initiative to develop and grow hao123.

In the second half of 2004, the era of website navigation showed a trend of prosperity and decline. Before the launch of the Spring and Autumn Safe Browser, there were a bunch of similar websites such as 265; After the Spring and Autumn Secure Browser came with a promotional URL navigation, Yahoo's Zhou Hongyi quickly followed suit and launched Yahoo-Tool. Major companies have intensively entered the field of website navigation, which will definitely compress the user base of hao123, and then force Li Xingping to invest more energy and money. Li Xingping lacked the confidence and background to compete with giants such as Yahoo and Chunqiu, and felt that there seemed to be no way out, and gradually developed the idea of monetizing hao123.

Li Xingping and Liu Jiping, manager of Baidu Shenpeng Branch, were already moved after not much contact, and at this critical moment, the Spring and Autumn acquisition team rushed to Guangdong, interrupting the rapid hand-in-hand between Baidu and hao123.

The acquisition team of Spring and Autumn is a very professional team, and it is even equipped with psychologists to analyze Li Xingping's personality in a targeted manner, and hire guides who are familiar with the local customs of Xingning, Guangdong Province to shorten the psychological distance between them. On the fifth day of the Spring and Autumn Acquisition Team's contact with Li Xingping, a turning point suddenly appeared.

Li Xingping was very tired of business activities, and had a headache when he encountered affairs such as taxation and industry and commerce, and found that the purchase price shouted by Baidu still needed to pay taxes by himself, and immediately said that I would not sell. The Spring and Autumn acquisition team immediately attacked Baidu, ridiculing Baidu for boasting that it knew hao123 very well, but it didn't even understand the common sense that hao123 only accepts after-tax payments for business. Li Xingping listened to the discord of the Spring and Autumn acquisition team, and felt that Liu Jiping's previous intimate conversations were hypocritical routines; Second, the Spring and Autumn offer was much higher than Baidu's, so it sold hao123 to the Spring and Autumn on the condition of 20 million yuan in cash and a certain amount of equity in the Spring and Autumn Season.

It turns out that the acquisition of the mature hao123 is a time and cost saving compared to building from scratch.

The acquisition of hao123 in Spring and Autumn was completed, and the cooperation between hao123 and Baidu was ended, and the search box of hao123 was replaced by Spring and Autumn Search. Such a simple move led to an instant drop of 25% in Baidu search traffic, and a 75% increase in spring and autumn search traffic.

Spring and Autumn Search and Baidu Search have been entangled for a year, although Spring and Autumn Search is often on the active offensive side, the market is very small. This time, it cost 20 million yuan to acquire hao123, and in just a few days, the traffic of Spring and Autumn soared by 75%, which proved that the self-construction of website navigation at that time was a childish disease that was taken for granted.

When it is time to acquire, it is better to acquire.

In terms of offline, Wei Dongsheng once ignored it, and now he has begun to make up for it. Offline cooperation is very cumbersome, such as: system providers, network providers, Internet cafes and so on.

System vendors refer to pirated indos systems such as Tomato Garden and merchants such as Zhongguancun Computer City installation systems. If the system is integrated with Spring and Autumn Security Manager, Spring and Autumn Security Browser and other software, users who purchase computers and brush the system have a great probability of being converted into loyal users of Spring and Autumn series products.

Wei Dongsheng actually resents this kind of bundling, and feels that software pre-installation is also a kind of hooliganism.

However, there is still a difference between system pre-installation and rogue software, and there is basically no hope of abolishing such unspoken rules, at least at this stage.

Why?

Take a look at Microsoft, IE, outlook, Office, Media, etc., all pre-installed in the indos system. Microsoft's IE, the reason why Netscape was able to dominate the browser market back then, relied on bundled sales. Users may not be comfortable with this kind of binding at first, but they will gradually get used to the natural acceptance of the existence of IE and Office, and then feel that it is not a complete indos system without IE and Office.

If you look at Apple, your computer also comes pre-installed with a batch of software that you can't uninstall.

The same is true for other manufacturers.

Pre-installed software has long been an unwritten rule of system vendors.

Wei Dongsheng is not satisfied with this status quo, but he has no ability to curb these system providers in the upstream of the industrial chain. Fighting against this unspoken rule is tantamount to an open break with companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc., while Microsoft, Apple, and 3721, Baidu are definitely two different concepts. Wei Dongsheng has the capital anus 3721 and Baidu, but he can't compete with Microsoft and Apple. Recklessly charging into battle will definitely attract a rebuttal from fans: "We just like it, what's in the way of you?" ”

Such a struggle is not the work of wise men.

Wei Dongsheng can't change the industry ecology, he can only adapt to the unspoken rules and do his best to reduce the level of rogue pre-installed software.

Merchants such as Zhongguancun Computer City, Spring and Autumn follow the unspoken rules of the industry to cooperate with them, but the pre-installed software allows users to easily uninstall their own products.

Considering that piracy of the indos system is an infringement, and the pirated system company is at risk of being sued by Microsoft, Wei Dongsheng has a complex method to register several obscuring leather bag companies, hiding behind the scenes to invest in or acquire Tomato Garden, Depth and other teams. In order to avoid unnecessary criticism, the pirated indos system of Spring and Autumn Remote Control also abides by the unspoken rules of the industry and continues to operate the pre-installed software business. However, Spring and Autumn has always adhered to the principle that pre-installed software must be uninstallable, and users have the right to uninstall software that annoys them.

Wei Dongsheng could not control the profit-seeking behavior of the merchants in the computer city, so he could only self-discipline and self-control, allowing users to freely uninstall the products of Spring and Autumn; After remotely controlling the piracy indos industry chain, Wei Dongsheng controlled the upstream of the system vendors, forcing software vendors to accept their own rules and allow users to uninstall and promote software freely and cheaply.

All this is not listed for the time being.

In terms of network providers, due to Jing Minqiang's strong network relationship in Huaguo Netcom and Huaguo Telecom, both operators and service providers are willing to give priority to cooperation with Spring and Autumn at the same price.

In terms of Internet cafes, Spring and Autumn Network is an online game operator, and from its beginnings to the present, it has tried to maintain friendly ties with Internet café owners. Coupled with Chunteng Games, a joint venture with Tencent, Chunqiu persuaded the owners of Internet cafes to set the Chunqiu Secure Browser and Chunqiu Look at the Search Engine as the default configuration of Internet café computers at a small cost.

Backed by 500 million RMB, Spring & Autumn Search has concluded strategic alliances with upstream and downstream merchants.

Then, overnight, the country changed color.

Netizens who are accustomed to going to Internet cafes to surf the Internet find that most Internet cafes have been replaced with Spring and Autumn Security Browser and Spring and Autumn Search Engine; Netizens who are accustomed to surfing the Internet at home have found that some pages of network operators and network service providers have added a search box for Spring and Autumn to take a look.

After Wei Dongsheng sacrificed the method of burning money, the market share of Spring and Autumn Search increased steadily, and the record was refreshed every day.

In addition, in terms of commercial operations, Spring and Autumn has also made some achievements.

Among the four heavyweights of China Search, Yahoo, Google, and Baidu, Wei Dongsheng attaches the most importance to the threat of Baidu due to the impression of his previous life. As mentioned earlier, a product like a search engine, a rich and rich way to play, and a poor way to live, even if Baidu is cut off hao123 diversion, there is still a way to maintain a balance of payments. The most efficient way to destroy Baidu is to destroy its business foundation, bleak its future prospects and fall into deficit itself.

Baidu Search's current business model is to go as an agent, which is also a feature of the times, in search, there is no agent in foreign countries, but in China, it is also trying to cooperate with agents. It's normal to work with an agent, and the problem with Baidu Search is that an agent named Shenhai Qilang provides nearly a third of Baidu's revenue. With such a high proportion, Shenhai Qilang already has the threat of anti-customer. If you can counter Shenhai Qilang and transfer Shenhai Qilang's business to Spring and Autumn Search, Baidu, which is already poor to death, will definitely make matters worse.

Is it possible for Shenhai Qilang to rebel?

The answer is yes.

Agents are agents after all, and they must not be held accountable for their loyalty.

Due to the chaos of the search engine industry, agencies often cooperate with multiple search engines at the same time. The agent even summed up the law: 3721 (Yahoo) will definitely choose; Baidu and Google will generally choose at the same time, Baidu focuses on domestic, and Google focuses on foreign; Choose one of the three major portals such as NetEase, Sohu, and Sina.

Why is there no Spring and Autumn Search?

Because the Spring and Autumn Search did not take the agent route, the agent market will naturally not have the influence of the Spring and Autumn Search.

The essence of business operation is to seek wealth, and the relationship between agents and search engines such as Baidu is a cooperative relationship. In fact, in addition to Baidu's business, Shenhai Qilang also has partnerships with other search engines. As long as the price code is right, why can't Shenhai Qilang belong to the Spring and Autumn search camp?

Faced with the offer of 80 million yuan in the Spring and Autumn Period, Xiang Hailong, the founder of Shenhai Qilang, agreed to the acquisition without hesitation.

As a result, Shenhai Qilang, which contributed one-third of Baidu's operating income, has become an industry for Spring and Autumn Search, and Xiang Hailong, the founder of Shenhai Qilang, has also become a regional sales manager for Spring and Autumn Search.

At the same time, the Cambrian 2004 project of the information industry of the intelligent universe has also been delayed.

On August 15, 2004, Xiao Lei led the team to work overtime and unexpectedly completed the second phase of the Cambrian 2004 project ahead of schedule. In order to prove the value of heterogeneous supercomputers to the country, and to prove the strength of the intelligent universe information industry to the country, Xiao Lei doubled the second-stage goal, resulting in the performance of the second-stage experiment B far exceeding 50 trillion times, and the Linpack calculation value was as high as 121.1 trillion times.