Rebirth of the big era of online games

Chapter 318 Investing in Baidu
The establishment of Boiling Group has aroused widespread attention in China.

After all, compared to the previous life, BAT is not enough at this moment, and after being intervened by the Boiling Group, the situation of the major domestic giants in the previous life has undergone fundamental changes.

Tencent will not talk about it.

As for Baidu, it was only established last year and launched a search engine this year. However, under the interference of the Boiling Group, many technical talents who should have gone to this company were all cut off by the Boiling Group, causing the search engine to be launched several months late. And the development is slow. At present, the largest search engine in China is still Google.

Of course, Fang Jie didn't mind getting involved in such a good thing that came to him on his own initiative, and poured 1500 million US dollars into it.

Now Fang Jie is not short of money, even if he spends billions to integrate the national express delivery industry, and has just invested in two joint ventures in South Korea, he is still not short of money. The 1500 million US dollars is just a small part of the PHS business. income.

Previously, Baidu's shareholding structure was relatively simple. Last year, a round of financing was completed. The founder team probably held about 70% of the shares, and the rest was taken by angel investors from two venture capital companies of Citigroup.

According to the normal development of history, Baidu raised 120 million US dollars in the first round and gave up about 30% of the shares. In September this year, it launched the second round of financing and raised 9 US dollars and gave up about 1000% of the shares. The founder team still has 25% of the shares left.

However, the random entry of the Boiling Group has robbed Baidu of many talents. Although Li is always the top three technical experts in the current international search engine rankings, he is also a clever woman who can't cook without rice, which has seriously slowed down Baidu's development speed.

Furthermore, the Forbidden Army incident accelerated the pace of the bursting of the Internet bubble and brought many subtle influences, which made Baidu's second round of financing negotiations very difficult.

For the second round of financing, they were looking for the boiling old acquaintance IDG, but this venture capital company was the same as before. Higher cost performance, lower risk, and faster money transfer.

After all, if Boiling is a search engine, Baidu probably has nothing to do with it. IDG thinks that Fang Jie, Boiling, cannot fail to see this piece of cake, so he wants to wait and see, but things froze there.

The inaugural meeting of the Boiling Group had a great impact on the Internet industry, and it could even be said to have completely changed the industry structure. In particular, Fang Jie also mentioned the strategic layout of the search engine at the meeting, which made Mr. Li quickly put down his dignity and had to come to the door. Find Fang Jie, a kid who is one round younger than him, to cooperate.

To be honest, Fang Jie really planned to deploy a search engine in 2002. Even if he has a Baidu now, it’s still not too late. .

So once the boiling group's 1500 million came in, there was nothing wrong with IDG, and Baidu's shareholding structure was completely different from its previous history.

After this financing, Boiling Group obtained 36% of Baidu's shares and became Baidu's largest shareholder. Mr. Li and his founder team retained 34% of the veto shares. For this reason, the two venture capital companies also invested 500 million US dollars to ensure that their shares were not diluted.

Although Mr. Li has lost his status as the largest shareholder, he has been in Silicon Valley after all. He played a trick in capital operation and divided the equity into AB shares, so he still has absolute control over Baidu.

Fang Jie didn't care about this. Anyway, he thought it was a big deal to acquire 1500% of Baidu's shares for US$36 million. If it wasn't for Mr. Li's refusal to give up more shares, he planned to spend US$5000 million for absolute control of.

Still the same sentence, it is impossible for me to take advantage of the cheapness alone, and the boss who can keep up with his rhythm can take it with me.

On the other hand, after the Boiling Group officially planted its flag, it has now become the target of public criticism, and its scale is no less than that of a chaebol. If it really becomes a complex of BAT in the previous life, it will definitely be unlucky, so in the future, let President Li and Brother Xiaoma Same, help Boiling go to the front to shelter from the wind and rain, and keep a low profile as much as possible...

In fact, the Boiling Group can no longer keep a low profile, and trouble has already arrived.

That is to say, many people are now waiting for New Year's Day. Once the new law is officially implemented, there will be countless lawsuits against the boiling network management, and as long as this kind of lawsuit is fought, Boiling will definitely lose the lawsuit and lose money.

Previously, most of the various resources on Boiling Network Management did not purchase copyrights. In the past, when there was no way to rely on, most copyright owners just turned a blind eye, because they really didn't have the energy to care about it, and they fought The cost of litigation is too high, and there may not be any results.

In fact, on the Internet now, it’s not the Boiling network administrators who are doing this. Many private websites are also pirating. Even if the new law is promulgated and implemented, it will be difficult to achieve any practical effect. Just being shot out of the head.

Therefore, before and after the group's establishment meeting, the busiest part of the company was not the game development department, but the legal department and the copyright department. Hundreds of people flew all over the world, buying all kinds of copyright content.

According to Fang Jie's instructions, there are currently two methods of copyright acquisition, one is direct buyout, and the other is sharing according to the download volume of Internet cafes.

Among them, the payment method is obviously Fang Jie's trick. The number of Internet cafes in the country is relatively limited, so there is an upper limit for copyright fees, and the capped fees can be roughly estimated.

As long as this fee is calculated by the copyright owner, and the buyout fee is increased a little bit, most people will choose to buy out. As for the future appreciation of copyright, only a few people will take such a long-term view, and everyone will be safe. first choice.

But obviously, the number of computers in Internet cafes has been growing explosively, and the method of sharing is the choice to maximize profits.

Another wonderful thing about this is that in the future, with the growth of individual family users and mobile phone users, Internet cafes will gradually decline. If it is a bought-out copyright, all the money earned in the future will go into their own pockets instead of being distributed to others, so Fang Jie is now trying his best to fool the copyright owner into directly selling the copyright in his hand.

Moreover, the future money-making model for copyrighted content is not download charges, but traffic charges. However, most people are now staring at Boiling Network Management, thinking that the download charge model is the correct profit posture for Internet copyrights, so they underestimate the value in their hands. The value of online copyright has made Boiling a lot of money.

It has to be said that Fang Jie now considers the problem from the perspective of the capital side. To achieve this step in his career, if he wants to earn enough money for 1 Hope Primary Schools, he can only slightly lower the lower limit. This is also impossible.

(End of this chapter)