The positive impact of the strategy of the big public relations department is not limited to the counterpart departments in the spring and autumn.

Taking advantage of Gong Qiuqiu's platform, the large public relations department of the Spring and Autumn Group quickly expanded its business scope, this group focused on the new office of the state, and the group focused on the science and technology department. The Grand Public Relations Department is not simply a collusion between officials and businessmen or an exchange of interests, but a lubricant for the cooperation between the Spring and Autumn series companies and the Zhiyu series of companies and government departments, and does its best to reduce unnecessary friction and wear. With the coordination of the big public relations department, not only did the search engine fly in the spring and autumn, but the review progress of the Cambrian 2004 supercomputer project was also sharply accelerated.

Spring and Autumn took a look at the haze that had just come out, and suddenly came the news of Baidu's third financing.

In June 2004, eight venture capitalists, including DFJ, Google, Integrity_Partners, Peninsula_Capital, China_Value, Venture_TDF, China_Equity, and Bridger_Management, jointly raised $15 million from Baidu. 15 million US dollars at the current exchange rate, equivalent to about 124 million yuan, considering that Baidu's total annual revenue in 2003 was only 45.911 million yuan, its pocket instantly bulged several times.

In fact, Baidu is poor and poor, and there is no shortage of money financially. A product like a search engine is a way to play for the rich and the poor to live. Baidu, under the leadership of Robin Li, attaches great importance to breaking even, and if it is greedy for equity, it can completely refuse the co-financing of eight venture capitalists such as DFJ.

However, financing doesn't have to be for the money.

With the development of Baidu's scale, the choice of venture capital is no longer to get money, but to cooperate with these venture capital institutions.

Looking back at the beginning of 2003, SoftBank Asia financing Shanda Network, Shanda Network was guarding the cornucopia of "Legend of Blood" at that time, how could it be short of money. The reason why Shanda Network accepts SoftBank Asia's investment is to take advantage of SoftBank Asia's listing in the United States, and the small direction is to solve the shadow of the legendary copyright incident. In fact, soon after SoftBank Asia officially financed Shanda Network, it sent people to South Korea to mediate the copyright conflict of Legend.

Similarly, Tencent's willingness to sign a VAM agreement with Spring and Autumn is also aimed at developing the online game business.

Startups and venture capital institutions seem to be in a tug-of-war. If the future prospects of the startup are very clear, the head can calmly choose a partner; If the future of a startup is bleak, the more it wants to rely on venture capitalists, the more they will take the opportunity to blackmail unequal treaties.

In the Huaguo search engine chaos, Baidu has never shown signs of defeat, and can sit firmly on the Diaoyutai to control the third financing. If Spring and Autumn takes a look at the future to launch an onslaught on Baidu, and Baidu is defeated one after another, Robin Li is very likely to lose control of Baidu and become a puppet of venture capital institutions. The eight venture capital firms that co-financed Baidu all have deep backgrounds, with China_Value known for its strong government relations in China. If Baidu cooperates deeply with China_Value after the decline, the commercial competition between Spring and Autumn Search and Baidu Search becomes a court battle, which will be too troublesome.

Therefore, Wei Dongsheng decided to make a quick decision.

From August 2003 to June 2004, especially during the period of review by government agencies such as the State Council Information Office, Wei Dongsheng explained his advanced understanding of the search engine to all the employees of the Spring and Autumn Look Project through paper materials and irregular exchange meetings. After the training, Chunqiu took a look at the project's employees, who may not be optimistic about the prospects of the search engine business, but understood what the result Wei Dongsheng wanted.

After the coordination of the Grand Public Relations Department to solve the constraints of government agencies such as the State Council Information Office, Wei Dongsheng quickly concentrated the profits of the "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" in May, June, and July, and was always ready to advance the profits in August and September, so as to save enough capital ammunition. The monthly sales of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" in May were 159.32 million yuan, 156.51 million yuan in June, and 163.9 million yuan in July, totaling 479.73 million yuan. If the settlement date of certain operating expenses is delayed, Wei Dongsheng can use up to 400 million yuan.

At the same time, Chunteng Games' "Dance Forest Meng Master" also handed over a perfect answer, with monthly sales of 8.866 million yuan in July, greatly exceeding the expectation of 6 million. The capital market was surprised by the good news of "Dancing Forest Meng Master", and public opinion gradually became optimistic about Chunteng Company, a joint product between Tencent and Spring and Autumn, and Tencent's stock price immediately ushered in a new round of climbing. Chunteng Games announced the July operating data of "Dancing Forest Cute Master" on August 5, and Tencent's stock price continued to rise for several days, reaching a new peak and new record of HK$7.6 on August 15. Wei Dongsheng's 9% stake soared to 1.219 billion yuan, of which 5.4% of the tradable stake held by Spring and Autumn was also valued at 730 million yuan.

Wei Dongsheng thinks that it is more important to take a look at the business in the Spring and Autumn Period than to invest in Tencent financially, and if there is a problem with the capital turnover of the Spring and Autumn Network, it may be possible to sell part of Tencent's equity to alleviate the crisis. With Tencent's high-level equity realization guarantee, the profits of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" in August and September can be withdrawn at least 100 million yuan.

That is to say, Wei Dongsheng can mobilize 500 million yuan to support Spring and Autumn and take a look.

Baidu had just raised $15 million, and Wei Dongsheng threw out 500 million yuan.

This is the entrenchment of real-world RMB players.

Come on, let's burn money to play.

After burning the 500 million, the continuous profits of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" continued to burn until Baidu went bankrupt.

Since it is technically impossible to quickly surpass competitors such as Baidu, Yahoo, and Google, they use capital games to raise the barriers to entry in the search engine market, forcing them to increase their spending until they can't afford to play this money-burning game.

This is a war of capital.

500 million funds are the ammunition to supply this war.

For now, the core lifeline of a search engine can be simplified into two aspects: traffic entry and business operation. Traffic entrance is the foundation of the search engine, especially in 2004, when netizens were ignorant of the search engine, monopolized the traffic entrance, and a large number of passive users became the search engine's bag. Business operation refers to the search engine company through the bidding ranking promotion, enterprise search service, portal search service and other business models to monetize their own traffic, which is the profit of the search engine company, but also the basis for the search engine company to continue to operate.

In the first half of 2004, Wei Dongsheng's attention was focused on how to coordinate the relationship with government agencies such as the State Council Information Office, and the development progress of the Spring and Autumn Search was very unoptimistic. In terms of competition in traffic entrances, Spring and Autumn Search was besieged by competitors such as China Search, Google, Yahoo, and Baidu; In terms of competition in business operations, the territory opened up by itself was shattered by Yahoo led by Zhou Hongyi, and the outward expansion plan was suffocated by Baidu, which is really miserable and miserable.

In mid-July 2004, Wei Dongsheng solved the hidden dangers of the policy and began to lead the Spring and Autumn Search's money-burning counteroffensive.

The first wave of offensive, the Spring and Autumn Search Lock Traffic Entrance Battle.

The traffic entrance can be divided into small items such as browsers, Internet navigation, and offline cooperation.

In 2003 and 2004, search engine companies were not yet aware of the important role of browsers, and Spring and Autumn took the lead in releasing Spring and Autumn Secure Browser last year, quickly seizing this blank market. Computer intelligent life has deconstructed Microsoft's indos system, and sometimes even understands the relationship between the indos system and IE browser better than Microsoft engineers. Other search engines launch browsers, the first is the disadvantage of time difference, and the second is that the user experience cannot catch up, and it is difficult to compete for the market from the territory of the Spring and Autumn Safe Browser.

In the browser part, the spring and autumn search has been successful. In fact, the existing market share of Spring and Autumn Search is mainly from the bonding users of Spring and Autumn Security Browser.

In terms of Internet navigation, Wei Dongsheng has long attached importance to it, and when he launched the Spring and Autumn Security Browser, he bundled website navigation.

However, this kind of Internet navigation is more like a bundled marketing of browsers, and its user base is included in the Spring and Autumn Safe Browser user group, which can stabilize the basic disk of Spring and Autumn Search, but cannot bring new users to Spring and Autumn Search. At the same time, the technical content of Internet navigation is low, and it does not require advanced technology, so the time first-mover advantage is particularly obvious. Just as other follow-up browsers cannot threaten the hegemony of Spring and Autumn Security Browser, the website navigation launched by Spring and Autumn cannot impact the original website navigation market.

Wei Dongsheng realized his mistake and immediately corrected it.

Today, the leader of the website navigation market is the well-known hao123.

Hao123 is also Baidu's partner object, Baidu provides technical support for it, 123 before it became famous, someone suggested that Baidu acquire hao123, maybe Baidu is short of funds, or Baidu feels that the relationship between the two sides is very stable, and it is the same thing to acquire or not, so he rejected the proposal. Entering 2004, hao123 suddenly became popular, peer 265 wanted to buy it, venture capital institution IDG wanted to invest in it, and even Google extended an olive branch to hao123 and asked Li Xingping about the psychological price of hao123. Baidu sensed the crisis, and the third financing received $15 million, which delayed the acquisition of Hao123.

In August 2004, it was rumored that Baidu would acquire HAO123 for 50 million yuan in cash and part of the equity.

However, this is only a façade. Baidu's revenue over the years has been analyzed earlier, and at this moment, Baidu is very poor, and its annual revenue in 2003 was only 45.911 million yuan. Although the third financing received a "huge amount" of 15 million US dollars, how could he be willing to give so much money to hao123?

The so-called 50 million is just an exaggeration of the routine.

Wei Dongsheng summarized the investigation results of the Spring and Autumn Business Intelligence Department and the monitoring of Baidu's capital flow by the computer intelligence life green algae, and has confirmed that the total reserve for Baidu's acquisition of hao123 is only 15 million yuan, and the psychological price may only be about 13 million yuan.

"Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" has sales of 100 million and a half in January, since you can acquire hao123 to get huge traffic with a very small part of the profits, why bother cultivating your own website navigation? It takes time and energy to promote the website navigation that comes with the Spring and Autumn Security Browser, and its cost is much higher than that of the merger and acquisition of hao123.

Wei Dongsheng quickly finalized the acquisition plan for hao123 and ordered the acquisition team to immediately rush to Guangdong to snipe Baidu.