Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1820 A mistake

The difference between Zhou Zhi and the people in Sun Corporation is that he never thought about the hardware platform, but directly became a foundry for Microsoft. He first mastered the technology of C language, and then relied on development needs to force out a C++-based, also object-oriented language, VC.

This VC worked for nothing, as Microsoft took the lion's share of the IP profits. However, Clover did not work in vain, because they gained Microsoft's trust and received many outsourcing businesses. In addition, they strengthened their team during the R&D process. After that, they simplified the VC and developed a basic language, UC, which was based on the UNIX system and independent of the Microsoft IP package.

After that, we began to greatly simplify and develop a cross-platform simplified operating system suitable for UC - the epoch-making MINICOS and its instruction set.

Then the peripheral stalk-like groups were further developed.

"Because MINICOS is based on the UNIX system platform, and the UNIX system is an open source system, there is no patent barrier, which provides great convenience for hardware manufacturers to develop."

"So after Winclover players, Sony game consoles, and Samsung digital cameras became the first three customers, all major manufacturers began to follow suit. Samsung and Huahong naturally adopted our instruction set after completing the successful cooperation on memory chips and continued to advance into the field of single-chip microcomputer chips."

Hu Lidong continued, "But when Sun was developing the OAK language, it lacked these convenient conditions, and it wasted a lot of time in building the platform structure and formulating standard protocols. The entire system is not much different from C++ except that it is simpler."

"Last year, the Oak language was finally developed successfully, but it was a case of getting up early and catching up late. When the researchers demonstrated the Green operating system, Oak programming language, class library and its hardware to hardware manufacturers, trying to convince them to use the Oak language to produce hardware chips, the hardware manufacturers did not show much enthusiasm for this."

Hu Lidong smiled and said, "Capitalists overseas are all profit-seeking and risk-averse. They think that the risk of producing hardware products when no one knows anything about the Oak language is too great. However, we already have something similar here, and there are already several digital devices in use, which are developed based on MINICOS+UC+basic instruction set, and are much more mature than the current Green+Oak+class library."

"Although UC was not developed specifically for the MCU market, it is still very well used on MCUs. This is also the benefit of your insistence on cross-platform development of UC," Hu Lidong expressed his admiration again: "At that time, we all thought you were preparing it for Apple's operating system, but we didn't expect that its application prospects would be so huge."

"On the other hand, Oak language needs to spend a huge amount of money to build a factory, and there may be a risk of not being able to enter the market. Unlike us, we have already established a complete ecological chain. Moreover, even if it goes into production, it will still compete with us for the market. Therefore, they dare not rashly support hardware, and this system was shelved at that time."

Zhou Zhi smiled and said that the information industry is actually a very competitive track. Once you fall behind, it will be very difficult to catch up.

He was very happy that he had brought some welcome changes to the country's information industry, and now he could even control others in some aspects.

Under pressure, after a three-day discussion, Patrick Norton's team decided to change the goal of their efforts again. This time they decided to apply the technology to the World Wide Web.

They believed that with the advent of the dot-com age, the Internet was evolving toward the same highly interactive vision that they had come to see on cable TV.

After some hard work, Patrick Norton led the team in a final gamble. After countless nights and countless cups of coffee, they finally wrote a small World Wide Web browser - WebRunner.

However, at this time, a devastating news reached their ears: Clover Group also developed a browser, which was one step ahead of them and powerful and easy to use. "Our web browser is so easy to use, especially the 'Yellow Pages Fuzzy Query' function, which is the pre-version of the search engine, and has been well received by users. Microsoft also took a fancy to our Clover browser and embedded it into its own system." Hu Lidong said with a smile.

In fact, this Yellow Pages fuzzy query is to embed a Yellow Pages search function invisibly into the browser's URL input box. When the user enters an address or a string of words, the browser will send it to a "Yellow Pages server."

There is a database on the yellow pages server that stores a large number of website addresses. The database will list the website addresses that users are most likely to want to visit based on the content entered by the users, so that users can easily find and click on the website addresses that they don’t remember clearly.

This is actually the original search engine. Behind it is the graph data and data retrieval engine developed by Zhouzhi for digital libraries. It has gained high market recognition when used here.

"Everyone in the company now says you are a demigod. You are so good at seizing opportunities." Hu Lidong shook his head and sighed, "When we started the project, we thought that graph database and data retrieval engine were for data libraries. But we never expected that they could be used in this way."

Zhou Zhi also laughed: "I just wanted to find an application scenario for the data library. You know, after TNT was invented, it has been used as a dye for thirty years. It was not until thirty years later that people discovered that it could also be used as a highly effective explosive because of an accidental accident. It was a complete accident!"

Both of them burst into laughter.

They were happy to make money, but Patrick Norton's team suffered a tragedy.

If this kid had read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he would have roared in anger at the heavens: "If I had Yu, why would I have Liang?"

Sun's investment enthusiasm has obviously waned with the series of failures.

Just when Patrick felt he had no other options, Sun suddenly informed him that it had received an acquisition offer from a competitor.

Clover Group is willing to purchase all of Patrick Norton's current research results, including the Green operating system, Oak programming language, class libraries, and a full set of IP packages such as hardware design books. It is also willing to pay Patrick Norton a higher salary than at Sun and continue to invest to allow them to continue their previous work.

This is a bit like the "player transfer" in the technology industry. Similar acquisition or merger cases are also common in Silicon Valley today, and the situation does not allow SUN and Patrick Norton's team to disobey.

After the agreement was signed, Patrick realized that Clover Group had extraordinary trust in him. Not only did they give him great confidence and invest human, material and financial resources, but they also granted his team the core usage authorization of MINICOS and UC.

Of course, this is based on a strict confidentiality agreement.