"Weibo is going to be sold, everyone talks about their thoughts, whether Baidu wants to buy Weibo." Robin asks questions at Baidu's executive meeting.

Baidu has been listed for more than a year, and after the initial half of a period of rapid growth, Baidu has stabilized in the search engine market, and has a downward trend in the second half of 03.

There are two reasons for the decline, the most direct impact is that Microsoft launched Bing Search many years in advance, and Yahoo also launched Yahoo Search, these two giants have a direct impact on Baidu's market share, and secondly, because of the mobile Internet, Baidu has almost no presence in this field, and the number of mobile Baidu APP downloads and real active users launched is far inferior to Yahoo.

Today, with the increasing attention of mobile Internet, Baidu's market value has been falling.

Shirley, senior vice president and head of sales and operations at Baidu, said: "I think we should buy Weibo.

Weibo can make up for Baidu's shortcomings, we have lagged behind Yahoo in the field of mobile Internet, and Weibo can directly help us catch up with Yahoo in the field of mobile Internet.

Similar to Quora, Newman designed a product logic and operating model that can best guarantee the sustainability of Weibo. ”

Everyone knows that Weibo, as one of the top apps in terms of mobile Internet users and activity, must have a very high price.

The most feared thing about this kind of acquisition is the acquisition, and it is found that its model is backward and not popular, and its decline is not instantaneous, but gradual, there are many cases of such acquisitions in the past, and many giants have stepped on the pit.

Zhou Xin's brilliant track record in the past determines that they have no worries in this regard, whether it is Riot Games or Quora, the Internet community built by Zhou Xin has been a mainstream product until now.

Although Quora wants to sell it now, it will definitely not sell for 70 billion, but compared with those acquisitions in the NASDAQ bubble era, Quora has also made a triple discount, you must know that whether it is an acquisition or listing in the bubble era, there are not a few people with a 0.1% discount on market value.

Shirley, who worked in Washington before coming to Baidu as an executive and was the chief of staff of the former Treasury Department, had a knack for her vaguely guessing why Weibo was being sold.

So in her opinion, it is a rare opportunity.

Although Baidu's chairman is also Chinese, unlike Tencent, most of the equity behind Baidu is in the hands of financial institutions, and even Zhou's new Baidu shares have slowly cashed out in the past six months.

And Robin has already entered the American nationality, and compared with Zhou Xin, he is half of his own person.

They don't have Tencent's concerns.

Tencent's actual controller, from the executive to the shareholders behind it, are all from Huaguo, and even the main development team is located in Huaguo, so it is normal to sell Weibo.

Not everyone has worked in Washington, and there is Shirley's keen sense of smell, and Taban Bhat, another vice president of Indian origin, has a different opinion:

"In my opinion, the operation of Weibo is quite mature, and many celebrities use Weibo as their main channel to express their opinions.

With the launch of Newman's Weibo, fewer and fewer celebrities insist on running their own personal blogs, and everyone finds that Weibo, a high-frequency interactive and short-form content method, is more in line with the current trend.

Including according to my observations, the brand side on Weibo, the advertising content is becoming more and more frequent.

Especially after the launch of Mphone2, after the popularization of 3G network, Weibo can send pictures without restrictions, and the advertising volume of Weibo has increased significantly.

As for some so-called personal opinion leaders defined by Newman, who buy Weibo's traffic promotion services, this income is even beyond our speculation.

I agree with what Shirley just said that Weibo can make up for Baidu's current shortcomings, and I don't deny Newman's product design capabilities.

It is precisely because Weibo is so good, such an excellent Internet asset, why should Newman sell it?

Newman is not short of money, Weibo has great potential, it has formed a scale effect, although only Mphone will pre-install Weibo, but users of other brands of smartphones will definitely have Weibo in the first application after getting the phone.

It's almost an app that can grow with the popularity of smartphones, and it's a great asset in every measure.

Why is Newman selling, and is there a risk that we don't know about.

I'm not opposed to acquiring Weibo, but we need to understand the cause and effect before we decide. ”

At this time, there were already many Indian-American executives in Silicon Valley, but unlike the later generations of Indian-born executives who became CEOs, most of the Indian-American executives are now vice presidents.

And because of Zhou Xin, there are also a lot of Chinese executives, especially in the product field, everyone subconsciously feels that Chinese or Chinese have a unique talent in product design.

The unanimous attitude of the executives present was that if Tencent really wanted to sell Weibo, and there was no risk in this matter that they did not know about, it must take Weibo.

Robin looked at Larry Page, "Larry, what do you think?" ”

As a former Google founder, Larry Page is far more power-hungry than Sergei Brin, so he is also the most powerful vice president of the merged Baidu, second only to Robin in Baidu's internal system.

Robin's desire for power is no less than that of Larry Page, and he has been looking for an opportunity to get rid of Larry Page, but he has no chance, and most of Baidu's directors support Larry Page.

Even Robin has a hunch that if he can't get Zhou Xin's support, then Larry Page will get a higher voting weight than him.

Therefore, although the two are not used to each other, they can still maintain the harmony on the surface.

Larry Page said: "We have to buy Weibo.

Baidu is facing an unprecedented crisis.

I don't know if you feel that in the mobile Internet, the presence of search engines is weakening.

Weibo and WeChat, for example, are mobile apps that don't want search engines to access their content, and even if we find their content on Baidu, it can't be accessed through the web.

They set a bad benchmark, and most of the mobile apps that followed refused to be searched by search engines.

With the rapid rise of the mobile Internet, we will lose a huge market, and when the content quality of the mobile Internet surpasses that of computers, the content quality may not exceed that of computers, even if it is just to catch up, and Baidu's ceiling will become extremely limited.

Mobile Baidu is actually a redundant app, users can open Baidu's mobile site through a mobile browser, why should it download the app?

But if we don't fit mobile and force users to download Baidu, can't users turn to Bing, Yahoo, and Quora?

Therefore, the dilemma faced by Baidu is that it is difficult for our own business type to expand in the era of mobile Internet, and the content of mobile Internet naturally excludes search engines, and we are facing a considerable dilemma. ”

After Time Warner acquired Quora, it has been trying to find new profit growth points, and as the technical threshold of search engines has been lowered, Quora has also begun to launch its own search engine, with the help of Quora's massive content, they have grown rapidly in the search engine field.

Larry Page continued: "I don't think we bought Weibo for Weibo itself.

Well, microblogging itself is also important.

More importantly, we should set a standard for the mobile Internet field, that is, applications on the mobile Internet should not exclude search engines, and their content should also be searched by search engines.

The status quo is that the mobile Internet is naturally separated from the traditional Internet, and users who do not have smartphones cannot browse the content created by mobile Internet users.

Traditional Internet users see what a certain celebrity has made on Weibo through the web portal, and when they see similar screenshots, mobile Internet users can directly comment below, and even get a reply from the celebrity, and the natural barriers formed by this interactivity will make Baidu's market share less and less.

Of course, it's still too late, the mobile Internet is still in its infancy, and I hope that we can use Weibo to make all mobile Internet app developers realize that they can get more users and be more beneficial to them by opening up their content to users of the traditional Internet.

Not all users now have smartphones.

At the same time, it can also make Baidu a bridge between the mobile Internet and the traditional Internet. ”

I have to say that Larry Page's vision is really vicious, and he can see at a glance that if the mobile Internet continues to develop in its current form, Baidu will face a dilemma.

This is also the dilemma faced by Baidu in later generations, which was left far behind in the era of mobile Internet, but Google is much better than Baidu, and it has finally stepped on the outlet of Android, almost opening up the entire chain.

After listening to everyone's opinions quietly, Robin secretly sighed that he was his biggest opponent, even if he was the chairman, Larry Page could put great pressure on him, and the other party looked at this matter from a perspective that was obviously more than a step higher than other executives.

There are even points that Robin himself didn't think of.

Robin is aware of the squeeze of the mobile Internet on the search engine, but through Weibo, the mobile Internet will not only not become an obstacle to the search engine, but will become the help of the search engine, which he did not expect.

Robin concluded: "Larry just said that it was very good, I will go to Newman and have a good talk, and then the business department needs to investigate the inside information of the Weibo sale, and we will do it simultaneously."

In addition, Shirley, you are doing a detailed report on Baidu's acquisition of Weibo, and Larry, you are in charge of the entire business negotiation process after the business negotiation starts. ”

Robin assigned the work, he didn't know the bottom of his heart, to be honest, he felt that he knew Zhou Xin, but sometimes he felt that he didn't know Zhou Xin so well.

There are many things that Robin thought Zhou Xin couldn't do, but it turned out that Zhou Xin had done it, such as Xinxin Technology.

Robin studied at Americon and worked at Americon for a few years, and later founded Baidu here, and stayed at Americon for a long time.

Robin admits he still knows Ameriken well, having previously worked for the Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal when he was working in New York, which is better known as the Dow Jones.

These two jobs gave him a full understanding of the global economic and trade system, and Robin realized that in the modern business system built by Ameriken, Huaguo is not positioned to do technical parts such as semiconductors, but Huaguo is the basic processing company, a supplier of a large number of labor.

As for the division of labor such as semiconductors, Ameriken was the first to give it to Neon, and later Neon was disobedient, and with the help of financial means and technical assistance, this division of labor was divided into Goryeo and Wanwan.

Therefore, Robin thinks that returning to China to engage in Xinxin Technology is purely half the effort, and his efforts are thankless, and he complained to Xu Yong in private.

Since there are still people from the Google department among Baidu's executives, Robin did not drive Xu Yong away, and Xu Yong still works at Baidu.

Including Zhou Xin, who only got a green card and did not become a naturalized citizen, Robin didn't quite understand these things.

Robin thinks that Zhou Xin is too idealistic in many things, and if he goes back to work on semiconductors, it doesn't matter if there is no result, and it is not a good thing to have results.

But now, Robin has enjoyed the benefits of Zhou's new idealism, which is to sell Weibo.

Robin, as an in-depth user of Weibo, also guessed why Zhou Xin wanted to sell Weibo, to put it bluntly, his identity determined that he could not grasp this public opinion position, if Zhou Xin became naturalized, it was not certain whether he would sell it.

Robin was also glad for Zhou Xin's idealism.

Baidu got the news, Microsoft also got the news, since the development of the strategy to turn to the mobile Internet, Microsoft's resources have been mobilized, the acquisition is just the beginning, and the tilt of various internal resources is more critical.

When Ballmer chatted with Bill Gates, he asked, "What's the matter with Newman wanting to sell Weibo?" ”

Bill Gates, who has been operating in Washington for many years, naturally knows what is going on, and after a brief speech, he said: "We are going to buy Weibo."

Weibo is a good product, and it is a good product in the field of mobile Internet, its value is not only reflected in money, it has a lot of potential value.

This is also in line with Microsoft's mobile Internet strategy. ”

After Bill Gates finished speaking, Ballmer nodded: "If it is for this reason, then the Weibo sale should be a high probability event, and I know its importance."

As we mentioned in our previous internal executive discussions, not to mention that Weibo is one of the most important mobile Internet applications, it can be well integrated into Microsoft's product system, even if it is not compatible with Microsoft's system, it is just a commercial act, and we want to acquire Weibo.

It's just that Tencent released the news like this, and I'm worried that we will have a lot of competitors. ”

Bill Gates laughed: "Microsoft doesn't have much else, it's just a lot of money."

And I talked to Newman about the way he accepted the share swap deal this time, and Microsoft was definitely the strongest contender.

The only downside of good stuff is that it's expensive. ”

For Bill Gates, it is imperative to win Weibo, which is related to his influence in Washington and even in Ameriken.

Bill Gates wants to take Weibo in the form of a joint acquisition by Microsoft and the Bill Melinda Foundation.

(End of chapter)