Rebirth of the Wild Age

If Silicon Valley is the center of the Internet world, Palo Alto is the center of Silicon Valley. ↓Bo "Luo "Little ↓ said

Google’s company address is located at 165 University Road in Palo Alto. This office building has given birth to many Internet companies. Two months ago, a website called PayPal went online next door. It is still unknown, but many Chinese people call it "Alipay of the United States" many years later.

Google has developed extremely fast, with more than 80 employees in more than a year.

However, there have been frequent negative news recently, and some netizens have accepted scams through the search advertising chain. For example, last month, someone used Google to search for a booking company, and even paid for the ticket. He didn't see the ticket until the day of the flight, and sued Google in anger.

These incidents are extremely troublesome. Even if you think with your knees, you can guess that someone is contributing to the flames, but you want Google to accept the financing plan.

Google took the initiative to compensate the victim’s losses, and at the same time issued a statement on the homepage of the website and in the newspapers: “Google will not do evil and will not become an accomplice of scammers. We firmly believe that from a long-term development perspective, companies that do good for the world are more in line with us and The shareholder’s philosophy, even if we give up some short-term benefits for this. Starting today, Google will conduct strict scrutiny on advertisers and will also launch a special screening mechanism in the near future."

Re-reviewing advertisers and suspending new advertising has caused Google's revenue to drop rapidly.

When Song Weiyang walked into the company, he happened to see two employees being taken away by the police and couldn't help asking, "What's the situation?"

"Assholes in the advertising department," Sergey explained briefly, "They took the money from the scammers to help the scammers circumvent the advertising censorship mechanism, hoping that they would be able to reform themselves in prison."

"It's time to do this." Song Weiyang smiled.

Google has been unable to eliminate false advertising since the day it started charging for search ads.

Google has also had various scandals in history, and once was directly investigated by the FBI. The reason is that Google's advertising department took the initiative to help scammers avoid the censorship mechanism for profit. A large number of fake drugs, counterfeit drugs, and smuggled drugs flooded the search results for a long time, and Google was fined 500 million US dollars for this. This scandal really wasn't a violation of individual employees, but the entire Google advertising department was involved!

In the face of interests, all censorship mechanisms are furnishings!

Google was fined 500 million U.S. dollars for playing so foolishly, so it became more and more restrained. Baidu also played the same way, but has never been retributed, so it is even more unscrupulous.

This is the fundamental reason why Google and Baidu’s ad censorship mechanisms are similar, but the differences are getting bigger and bigger—China is too nonsense in consumer rights protection litigation. Sometimes the law and law enforcement agencies are both furnishings, and they can only make trouble through public opinion. Great solution.

There is also the lag of the law. The penalties imposed by many laws and regulations in China have remained in the 1980s and 1990s. Even if the black-hearted company loses the lawsuit, it is only fined 350,000 yuan and ordered to rectify it (compensation is not included). The judge can do nothing about it. The sentence is already the highest penalty standard.

China promulgated a new "Advertising Law" in 2015, and finally increased the amount of fines, but by how much?

For publishing false advertisements, a fine of three to five times the advertising fee will be imposed. If the advertising fee cannot be calculated or is obviously low, a fine of 200,000 yuan up to 1 million yuan will be imposed. Those who violate the law more than three times or have other serious circumstances within two years shall be fined more than 5 times and less than 10 times the advertising cost. If the advertising cost cannot be calculated or is obviously low, a fine of 1 million yuan to 2 million yuan shall be imposed.

In other words, Baidu lost a lawsuit due to false advertising and was fined 2 million yuan. This amount of money is a shit! Let alone a fine of 500 million US dollars, if Baidu is fined 500 million yuan, you think Baidu dare not be so arrogant.

Unless a powerful institution takes the lead and prosecutes a large number of cases at the same time, it can teach Baidu a bitter lesson.

…

Song Weiyang entered the conference room with Larry and Sergey. After sitting down for a few words, the project leader of Sequoia Capital also came.

"Mr. Harris, this is Mr. Song Weiyang, Google's major shareholder." Larry introduced.

Harris has a big beard and a smile on his face. He offered to shake Song Weiyang's hands and said, "Hello, Mr. Song!"

Song Weiyang nodded in salute, sat back and said with Erlang's legs upright, "You can continue the negotiation, I can just listen to it."

Sergey said: "There are currently two fundamental differences, one is that Sequoia Capital's valuation of Google is too low, and the other is the setting of a dual voting system."

Harris shrugged and said, "Gentlemen, the valuation of $600 million is already very high."

Larry said: "Webvan's revenue was not as good as Google last year, but it was valued at $1.5 billion. Why is Google valued at only $600 million?"

“I’ve explained this question a long time ago,” Harris said. “Webvan has carried out two rounds of financing and a large amount of capital has been injected. Moreover, Webvan has also set up many stores and delivery stations. These fixed assets and logistics channels are under evaluation. The score is high among them."

In another six months, when Webvan conducts its IPO, its valuation will directly reach 8 billion US dollars. Then the Internet company went off the track, took the money to build stores and channels madly, only played for a few months before the capital chain broke, and declared bankruptcy amidst the consternation of the crowd.

If you have to make an analogy, Webvan's mode of operation is a bit similar to JD.com. It is a pity that the United States has a large area with sparse population, high delivery costs, and low online shopping efficiency, coupled with the bursting of the Internet bubble, directly causing this company to become a martyr.

Larry said: "Webvan's store and channel investment will never exceed $10 million. This is not the reason why they are overvalued."

Harris said: “Investors have taken a fancy to Webvan’s business model, which is different from Amazon. Amazon mainly sells books and audio-visual products online, while Webvan sells daily necessities. Webvan can definitely become an online Wal-Mart, so it’s Valued at $1.5 billion."

"Google also has its own business model," Sergey said, "and it's a unique business model, the only one in North America!"

Harris laughed: "But there are many search engines. If Yahoo recovers and acquires an excellent search engine, I am afraid that Google's development prospects will be blocked."

"But Yahoo only cares about portal traffic, because traffic is linked to stock prices. They will not do other business, and even put more excellent search engines without them. They are afraid that the search will cause too good to lose users." Larry defended.

Historically, until 2002, when Google’s annual revenue reached 240 million U.S. dollars, Yahoo suddenly realized something and wanted to buy Google for 3 billion U.S. dollars. At the time of the Internet bubble, the value of Internet companies was greatly underestimated, and the price of $3 billion was not too insulting.

Harris frowned and said, "What do you think the valuation should be?"

"At least 1.5 billion U.S. dollars!" Sergey Lion said loudly. Now it is the golden age of the Internet, and it is normal to quote 2 billion U.S. dollars.

"I'm afraid the price is a bit whimsical." Harris said.

Larry smiled and said: "You can go back and continue the evaluation, anyway, Google is not short of money for the time being."

Song Weiyang interrupted, "Even if I am short of money, I can continue to invest."

Harris was very troubled by this, saying: "Then we put the evaluation price on hold, let's talk about the dual equity structure first. The ratio of 1 to 10 voting rights seems to be too low."

"There is no room for negotiation," Sergey said. "You have only two choices: accept or not."

The AB share model is very popular in the American Internet community at this time. Under the same circumstances, the founder's stock voting rights are several times that of external investors. One vote is equal to two votes, one vote is equal to five votes, and one vote is equal to ten votes. Both parties can negotiate and determine.

Harris had a splitting headache. He hadn't met such a difficult-to-speak founder for a long time, so he had to go back and report to the company's executives.

Next, Song Weiyang met with the project leaders of several other venture capital institutions, and without exception, they all talked about it.

In fact, Google’s funds have bottomed out, because the development speed is too fast, and the monthly salary of more than 80 employees is a large expenditure.

Larry and Sergey invited Song Weiyang here purely for acting.

A few days later, Taurus Capital, which has no reputation in the United States, suddenly announced that it would continue to inject capital into Google, valuing Google at $1.5 billion.

Song Weiyang even went to a talk show, bragging about how to snipe Soros, and then invited two newspapers to build momentum for Taurus Capital and Google. UU reading www.uukanshu.com is all Google's working capital. If there is no venture capital company to invest money in, Google will have to default on salary next month.

Although they knew that Google was bluffing, the venture capital institutions panicked. Because the momentum is also effective, more and more limelight companies pay attention to Google, and this competitive pressure instantly becomes stronger.

Finally, large-scale venture capital companies such as Sequoia Capital and KPCB began to connect in series. They felt that they could not eat Google alone, so they prepared to jointly develop a financing plan.

Five venture capital companies jointly negotiated with Google, the latest valuation is 800 million US dollars, and invested 400 million US dollars to obtain one-third of Google's shares.

At the same time, these five venture capital companies also made requests, and they plan to send a CEO to Google to do administrative operations.

The news came out and shocked the United States immediately.

The king of Internet financing this year is Webvan, and the second place is Google!

When the second round of financing was over, Google's valuation skyrocketed to $1.2 billion. These venture capital companies have spent too much money and urgently need to withdraw funds from the stock market, so they can't wait to list Google. They have simply spared no effort to start various campaigns, claiming that Google has created a new era of online business models.

With this momentum going on, I am afraid that the valuation of Google's next round of financing will exceed $3 billion.

In the Internet these years, it doesn't matter whether it makes money or not, the more you boast, the more valuable it is. Webvan's US$8 billion valuation is also justified.

And Song Weiyang and Taurus Capital also showed their prominence in this incident and began to be known to some Americans.

The Chinese media quickly got second-hand news and exploded. The major shareholder of a US Internet company worth 1.2 billion US dollars is actually a Chinese-not a Chinese like Yang Zhiyuan, Song Weiyang is a native Chinese!