Chapter 36 Yahoo's conspiracy to passively make up lessons

Due to the miscalculation that the Chinese market is not optimistic, although Yahoo, the veteran manufacturer in the instant messaging market, launched the Yahoo Messenger service in 1997, it has not made any achievements in the Chinese market. The NetEase Bubbles are not as good as this, which embarrasses Yahoo, which entered the Chinese market in the early years. In 2004, Zhou Hongyi, who became the president of Yahoo China, tried to change this situation.Zhou Hongyi is well-known in the industry for his sophisticated investment vision and strong execution ability.He used the small plug-in 3721 to achieve an annual income of hundreds of millions of yuan, and promptly resold it to Yahoo at a price of 120 million US dollars; he then invested in Xunlei, which has become one of the most successful commercial websites on the Internet; he finally founded Qihoo also easily obtained tens of millions of dollars in investment.He is known as the "fighter" in China's Internet industry: he competed with Baidu for territory, turned against CNNIC, turned against Ma Yun, and provoked a free antivirus battle.Every step he took was accompanied by huge controversies, mixed reputation and contradictions. "Zhou Hongyi is ruthless, loyal, smart, and rich enough. He is the most individual figure in the Internet industry I have ever seen." Liu Ren, the founder of the IT writing community, commented on him.

Zhou Hongyi was born in Hubei in October 1970, and graduated from the Department of System Engineering, School of Management, Xi'an Jiaotong University.When he was studying at Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhou Hongyi started writing game software and making antivirus products. In July 1995, Zhou Hongyi, a postgraduate graduate, met Jack Ma for the first time in the United States and began to set up China Yellow Pages on the Internet.Zhou Hongyi came to Beijing and joined the Founder Group. In October 1998, Zhou Hongyi left Founder Group and founded 3721 Company.Because the company's website is called 3721, which means "regardless of three seven twenty one", launched "3721 Internet real name", created Chinese Internet service, 3721 was founded, Zhou Hongyi had no money to engage in publicity and education market, so he thought of using the address bar of the browser Plugins are promoted this way.The user can directly enter the Chinese language in the navigation bar of the browser to directly reach the relevant website.When the new company started, there were only five people. Zhou Hongyi and his colleagues found a cheap house, maintained a minimum living standard, and cooked for themselves.Hundreds of thousands of yuan were quickly burned.At that time, Zhou Hongyi felt that the most terrifying thing was 3721's sudden death, which was more terrifying than his own death. In July 1999, Wang Gongquan, a senior partner of IDG, invested $250,000 in him.With money, Zhou Hongyi's journey went smoothly.

The cover report of "IT Manager World" in October 1999 wrote: "Zhou Hongyi and his 3721 website stand out from the new generation of Internet entrepreneurs and become the one that has attracted much attention in China's Internet economy this year." After going through the "cold winter" of entrepreneurship Afterwards, 3721 Company achieved success—the Chinese Internet plug-in once covered more than 90% of Chinese Internet users, with more than 80 million people using it every day. At the beginning of 2000, 3721 conducted the second round of financing and obtained more than 2 million US dollars from three venture capitals.There is no doubt that Zhou Hongyi's 3721 has completely changed the way Chinese people surf the Internet. In November 2003, 3721 was sold to Yahoo for $120 million.Yahoo China was labeled as an Internet giant, but in fact it had little influence in China at that time, and even the boss’s seat was vacant for a period of time, and the seriousness of “acclimatization” was rare among foreign companies.Yahoo took a fancy to Zhou Hongyi's team and ready-made revenue, indicating that this was an acquisition eager for quick success.

Zhou Hongyi turned around and became the president of Yahoo China, from an entrepreneur to a manager of a foreign company.In order to unite the old people of Yahoo China, he slapped the table, scolded his mother, and broke his front teeth when he got drunk.At the beginning of taking office, Zhou Hongyi changed Yahoo China's inaction in the previous five years and changed course.Under his leadership, Yahoo Yisou, Yahoo Messenger, 1G free mailbox and other Internet businesses have been launched, and Yahoo has become one of the best portal websites in China.Investor Wang Gongquan once said: "Zhou Hongyi is the most troublesome fighter in the Internet industry, but it is his fighter gene that made me invest in him twice." Yahoo's instant messaging software Yahoo Messenger is Yahoo's portal part of the roadmap.

In order to restore its unsatisfactory situation in the field of instant messaging in China, Yahoo launched MSN6.2 version after Microsoft, Tencent launched QQ2004 version, and launched the Chinese version of Yahoo Messenger version 6.0 in early June 2004, emphasizing on strengthening the entertainment of communication .The new version of Yahoo Messenger integrates functions such as Yahoo search, Yahoo mail, online photo album, short message, and games, and uses free 1G free mailboxes and free unlimited text messages as a bait to attract target customers. . "Yahoo Messenger 6.0 Chinese version is an upgraded version that Yahoo first launched in non-English-speaking countries other than the United States. It is more than one to two months ahead of the release in more than 20 other markets around the world, which shows that Yahoo attaches great importance to the Chinese market." Zhou Hongyi said. , In two to three years, Yahoo Messenger will not consider charging issues, and there will be no annoying advertisements on it. On the contrary, Yahoo Messenger is bundled with a free self-written text message function, and users can send text messages to mobile phones for free.Obviously, Yahoo Messenger is targeting Tencent, because among the major instant messaging products in China, only Tencent charges fees.Zhou Hongyi's development focus for Yahoo is search, email and instant messaging. With the launch of Yahoo Messenger 6.0, Zhou Hongyi is obviously trying to integrate these three major businesses.The complete localization of Yahoo China through the integration of the three major business segments may be Yahoo China's "overlord conspiracy".

On July 26, 2004, Yahoo China launched a free e-mail with a capacity of 1G for its rival Google in the search field in Beijing.It is worth noting that if you want to get Yahoo's 1G large-capacity free mailbox, you must become a Yahoo Messenger user and add more than one friend.The drunkard's intention is not to drink, Yahoo's move is undoubtedly to get the upper hand in the second instant messaging war through the huge publicity of 1G free mailbox.In fact, the purpose of Yahoo is much more than that. The ultimate goal of Yahoo! Messenger is to enter the telecom industry chain, provide voice services from PC to Phone, and compete for a market that originally belonged to traditional telecom.However, due to the lack of localization and the weakness of not understanding the needs of Chinese users, it is still only in a theoretical state.

Nevertheless, in 2004, Zhou Hongyi achieved the first profit in the history of Yahoo China.Cash receipts exceeded $40 million and gross profit was close to $10 million.Still, he couldn't change everything.The entire business of Yahoo China is supported by the money earned by 3721; the assessment indicators are all profits, and the more Zhou Hongyi does, the thinner the profits will be.At the same time, the Alibaba business was merged with Yahoo China.Ma Yun called the event "Alibaba's acquisition of Yahoo China"; after the merger of Yahoo and Alibaba, Zhou Hongyi resigned from the position of president of Yahoo China according to his own plan, with tens of millions of dollars in exchange for selling the 3721 company to Yahoo in his pocket .