Chapter 12 The Glory and Controversy of Tencent Who is "Public Enemy"

There is hardly any industry that makes people feel so close to heaven and hell as the Internet.In just 10 years, the representative figures of China's Internet have been changing like a revolving lantern.At the earliest time, these names were Wang Zhidong, Ding Lei, Chen Tianqiao, Li Yanhong, Ma Yun, Shi Yuzhu and Ma Huateng. In mid-June 2009, Tencent's latest financial report for the first quarter of 2009 showed that its net profit was RMB 1.035 billion (US$151.5 million), an increase of 19% over the previous quarter and an increase of 93.8% over the same period last year.Once again become "the most profitable Internet company in China".

No matter which dimension you think about, the rise of instant messaging software in China's Internet industry is more in line with the simple wisdom of the Internet: Whoever can lock in users will win the future.At present, Tencent QQ has more than 930 million registered users, of which 350 million are active users, and more than 45 million are online at the same time.The focus of the industry is: Why is Tencent’s QQ so popular instead of other network application software? Why is instant messaging software, a product that has no way of making money in other parts of the world, so profitable in China? Why is it so popular in China, including Microsoft’s MSN? Nearly 40 softwares of China are coveting QQ's position for such a long period of time, can it still occupy more than 60% of the market share?

The attention fell on Ma Huateng. The industry's impression of the helm of Tencent is that Ma Huateng is such a person: he never loses his temper and is elegant, but he has a plan for every step.The few partners who started the business together are still developing together in Tencent. The stability of the team is rare in the Internet industry.Tencent has a tradition of collective management. Female employees like to call their boss "Xiao Ma Ge", while male employees often call him by his English name Pony, which means little pony.As for what kind of person Ma Huateng is, it is difficult to say clearly, low-key, restrained, but when it comes to Tencent, people who know a little about the Internet, it seems that there will be a "high-spirited fighting spirit that invades many fields." Penguin image, and Ma Huateng himself is also known as "public enemy".

Ma Huateng started a portal in 2003; after he invaded the field of casual games, he aggressively entered the large-scale online games; in mid-2005, Ma Huateng launched online auctions and online payments.Since then, Tencent has entered the multi-party search market.In the meantime, there are countless small businesses bred on the QQ platform.In fact, there are not a few Internet companies in China that span multiple business lines, but no Internet company can lead in more than two business lines at the same time, and Tencent is the only one. Despite taking the top spot among Chinese Internet companies, the controversy surrounding Ma Huateng seems to have never stopped. "Ma Huateng is a well-known plagiarism king in the industry. And he plagiarized blatantly and openly." Wang Zhidong once made no secret of this.Almost all of Tencent's products are made by imitating other products. QQ is originally an imitation of ICQ, TM is an imitation of MSN, TT is an imitation of Firefox and other browsers (the latest version of TT4. The imitation of the center... Because of this, Ma Huateng got the nickname of "imitator".In an interview with "Chinese Entrepreneur", Ma Huateng said, "I don't innovate blindly. What Microsoft and Google do are what others have done. The smartest way is definitely to learn the best cases and then go beyond. I don't compete for the first place. One, it’s meaningless. As soon as a new product comes out, it must be stable, and you can’t change it however you want, and you have to be cautious.” In this way, it may be easier for us to understand Tencent’s achievements.

Still, Ma Huateng is not just surrounded by a dazzling halo.Ma Huateng's low profile has been fixed in the media. On the Internet, where wars of words are very prone to occur, Ma Huateng seems to have nothing to do with saliva.So the excitement in the media when the coral poly event broke out is all too easy to understand.The first thing I saw was that the author of the Tencent QQ plug-in product Coral Polyp was arrested, then prosecuted, and then sentenced to three years in prison, which caused an uproar in the Internet circle, which has always been calm. Chen Shoufu, born in December 1980, is very obsessed with computers.According to the "IT Times Weekly" report, sometimes he can sit in front of the computer for several days in order to study a program, and only leave the computer when eating. To save time, he will rush to the cafeteria to quickly resolve the "battle".After hard work, Chen Shoufu's technology has advanced by leaps and bounds.Chen Shoufu, who has gained something in the development technology, discovered many shortcomings of QQ, so Chen Shoufu, who was still a student at the time, launched the coral version of QQ. He used his computer technology to modify the QQ program: coral version of QQ On the basis of Tencent QQ, the function of exploring IP is added and QQ advertisements are removed.The Chen Fushou incident caused an uproar, and Ma Huateng was also pushed into the vortex of public opinion.People with good intentions compare the practices of Ma Huateng, the boss of China's instant messaging software, and Bill Gates, the boss of instant messaging software in the world. MSN also has a plug-in. The author of this plug-in is Su Juan. Through MSN Shell, she earns more than 600,000 advertising revenue per month, and the annual income is expected to exceed 7 million. The fate of Chen Fushou and Su Juan has brought many benefits to Ma Huateng. question.

Fang Xingdong, a veteran of the Internet, believes that the author of Coral Polyp launched his own anti-commercial version of QQ purely out of interest and hobbies.It cannot be said that there is no fault. The fault is actually very obvious. The key is Tencent's behavior, which endangers the rules of Internet development.In fact, in the early days of Tencent, many of the things Ma Huateng did were exactly the same as the author of coral polyps.Obviously, the author of coral polyps lacks legal awareness, and did not clean up his business model in a timely and ingenious manner during the commercialization process like Tencent.For Tencent, it is only natural to maintain its own commercial interests.However, such a move was too vicious, and it passed.This case will become Tencent's eternal crime!

However, there was an unconfirmed rumor circulating in the market that since the coral polyp was sold to 265, many things were unclear. Chen Fushou had been sued before and compensated Tencent for 100,000 yuan. The checks circulating on the Internet angered Ma Huateng, and a second prosecution began.It is said that Cai Wensheng asked Lei Jun to ask Ma Huateng, but to no avail. Not long after the coral polyp incident, Tencent employees collectively switched jobs and had disputes with 51.com, the owner of Rainbow QQ, which once again plunged Ma Huateng into the center of the whirlpool of public opinion.Some commentators pointed out: Ma Huateng is an out-and-out gangster. When Tencent was first established, it borrowed ICQ from foreigners to lay eggs. .Now facing the same competition from his opponent, Ma Huateng pretends to be "the strong are being bullied", pretending to be low-key.The world is sinister, and he wants his former employees to experience the same prison conditions as coral developers. His actions cannot conceal his ambition to become the overlord of the world.The harsh criticism of Ma Huateng's moral level was once rampant, but Ma Huateng remained low-key and did not respond.

None of this prevents Tencent from growing into one of China's most promising Internet companies.Ten years of Tencent is a microcosm of China's Internet development.In the past ten years, China's Internet has grown tenaciously amid harsh criticism. One thing to be proud of is: Although China's Internet has been criticized in the shadow of imitators, it is still growing tenaciously in China's local market, and has developed extremely brilliant products. flower. In the contest and competition between Tencent's QQ and Microsoft MSN, Microsoft seems to be not as strong as imagined, and the technical competition seems to be slightly inferior. The stealth function that QQ has had since its birth can only be provided by MSN in the past two years; Baidu and Google's The competition faced the same situation as Ma Huateng from the very beginning. There seemed to be as many people who sang praises to Google as sang dirges to Baidu, but the final result was that Google lost ground repeatedly in China; and in the competition between Ma Yun’s Taobao and eBay During the war, eBay never had the upper hand in the Chinese market.

The face-to-face confrontation with foreign Internet giants is so satisfying. This scene has only appeared in China's home appliance chain industry.Throughout the ten years of Tencent, Ma Huateng has occupied 80% of China's instant messaging market with ten years of specialization; he has also quickly touched the cheese of portals and major professional websites.The rather innocent Ma Huateng seems to have been insisting on providing better services for his users, and wants to wrap a warm scarf around the penguins, but the industry seems to have reached a consensus that the penguins are ferocious.