In the 1992 "Forbes" list of the 400 richest people in North America, veteran media tycoon John Kruger ranked third with a personal wealth of US$5.5 billion, after Simon's US$65 billion and Daemon's US$7.5 billion.
Compared to the first two, John Kruger's personal wealth has not changed much in recent years.
Later, Sam Walton passed away in April this year. Sam Walton’s wife and four children occupied the fourth to eighth places with the same personal wealth of US$5.1 billion. They also became the Forbes list in recent years. A highlight on the list.
Next, Warren Buffett ranked ninth with a personal wealth of US$4.4 billion.
The two Newhouse brothers are tied for tenth place with personal wealth of US$3.5 billion each.
It is not difficult to find that even if the two tied tenth-ranked personal assets are included, except for Simon, the combined assets of all other billionaires in the top ten on the list are only US$499, which is still far away from Simon's personal US$65 billion. A huge gap of $15.1 billion.
When the list was announced, it inevitably aroused attention and discussion from all parties.
Simon's personal assets last year were only US$35 billion, which was already a bit shocking. This year's US$65 billion has completely exceeded the imagination of most ordinary people.
Therefore, many media naturally began to analyze, what does $65 billion mean
An article in the New York Times gives an intuitive concept that is most suitable for ordinary people: Based on the average annual income of US$25,000 in recent years, an ordinary person would need to earn US$65 billion. It works for a full 2.6 million years.
It only took Simon Westeros 6 years to accumulate his current wealth.
Of course, there is no lack of discussion as to whether Simon’s net worth at this time was that much.
However, just the number of publicly listed high-tech companies such as Cisco, AOL, Microsoft, Intel, etc. in the Westeros system is already dazzling.
Daenerys Entertainment, which has created a series of box office miracles, completed the merger of MCA, and created the DC movie universe, is like a lurking giant. Unlike a series of public companies such as Cisco, the huge Daenerys Entertainment is now completely owned by Simon Westeros alone.
In addition, the strength shown by these companies such as Verizon Telecom, Cersei Capital, Melisandre Corporation, Ygrit Corporation, etc. cannot be underestimated.
Such a business empire is so huge that it has become ubiquitous in American life. The founder's personal net worth has reached 65 billion U.S. dollars. Although the increase in assets has reached an astonishing 30 billion U.S. dollars in just one year, according to careful statistics, it has not It's not that hard to accept.
With media reports and heated public discussions, the technology and entertainment sectors of American Story will inevitably rise again after the release of the new annual "Rich List".
There is too much uncertainty in Hollywood and the threshold is a bit high. Therefore, the booming new technology industry has once again attracted more and more attention.
Entering September, the 1992 U.S. presidential election has also entered its latest sprint phase.
The candidates of both parties in the United States have been determined, and the current President George Bush easily won the Republican nomination. Bill Clinton successfully emerged as Bush's rival after defeating a series of rivals.
When this year's Forbes list was released, the views on Simon Westeros's personal wealth became an important issue frequently mentioned by media reporters during the campaigns of the two candidates.
In this regard, George Bush is even more embarrassed.
In relation to the U.S. economy in recent years, media reporters like to ask how George Bush intends to solve the growing personal wealth of the top U.S. billionaires as well as the record poverty rate and high unemployment rate in the United States.
As we all know, Mr. President always likes to pay attention to overseas issues, or to be more precise, oil.
There is almost no doubt that the Bush family is an important part of the American oil conglomerate.
The president really has little interest in the U.S. economy.
Of course, this is the truth, but it certainly cannot be said, so it can only be dealt with.
In this regard, Clinton appears to be quite at ease.
Clinton's campaign slogan is related to the economy. When the presidential candidate is asked similar questions, he often subtly changes the topic to the new technology field that is rapidly exploding in the United States, and then contacts his running mate Al Gore. The "Information Superhighway" plan he launched constantly depicts the prospect that after he is elected, he will promote another major change in the U.S. economy, especially how many opportunities, wealth, and jobs this economic change will bring to the United States.
In fact, many of the data cited by Bill Clinton were quietly provided by the Westeros system.
With the three Internet giants of Cisco, AOL and Igrit, coupled with Simon's prophetic advantage, no one knows the development prospects of the new technology field in the next few years better than the Westeros system.
This information is definitely not available to the George Bush camp.
Moreover, it is an indisputable fact that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have largely sided with Bill Clinton.
For these two major forces, one controls a large amount of wealth in the United States, and the other controls a large amount of public opinion resources. The Bush administration can only try to win over them as much as possible.
For Simon, in the face of the public opinion trend after the release of the rich list, the Westeros system will certainly not remain indifferent.
Hatred of wealth is an emotion that is indispensable in any society. Therefore, the public relations team of the Westeros system is operating at full capacity during this period. The focus is to promote Simon as a special case and a miracle, not just a pure super rich man.
The public will always be more receptive to miracles.
Simon's extraordinary personal wealth deserves to be called a miracle.
There are discussions, exclamations, and envy, and naturally there will be no shortage of criticism and questioning.
Not only is the U.S. presidential election, this year is also an election year for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. It would be too obvious and deliberate for the two presidential candidates to take advantage of Simon, and some members of Congress would not make too many assumptions in order to increase their support.
A Republican Senate candidate in California quickly began blaming three Westeros companies for hindering the development of competitors in the same industry because of their strong position in the emerging Internet field after the Forbes list was released.
The congressman was very cautious and did not directly use the word monopoly.
The Internet industry is still in its early stages of development, and Yigrit is still in the stage of continuing to spend money and lose money.
It is obviously too early to accuse monopoly now.
Moreover, Igret not only took the initiative to open up a series of core patents of the World Wide Web, but also spared no effort to create a positive image of openness and sharing for itself in the process.
In addition, AOL is not a monopoly due to limitations in its business scope.
Cisco, the only company with obvious monopoly suspicions, happens to have a relatively single product, and is basically the only one in North America. You can't force others to license the products you have worked so hard to invent to other companies.
Of course, as the Internet industry continues to explode, the three companies' dominant positions in the entire industry have become increasingly obvious.
Privately, serious calculations of certain joint strategies do involve U.S. antitrust regulations.
But, after all, this is just a matter of whether it is necessary or not.
No corporate giant in the United States dares to say that it has never violated U.S. antitrust laws.
However, the 'timing' of the Senate candidate's accusation this time was very bad, because Igret was about to make another key move to open its technology to the outside world.
This time it is the email technology that many companies have been coveting for a long time.
As the most widely used technology of Yigrit Portal, almost every World Wide Web user will register an email address after logging into Yigrit Portal.
Therefore, as of September 1992, the number of e-mail registrations on the Igret portal had reached 37 million, and the number of daily active users exceeded 10 million.
With such a huge user base, any technology company with a little vision will understand the huge business opportunities contained therein.
The revenue from e-mail advertising for the Igret Portal is also rising.
However, to the outside world, this may be an eye-catching and huge user base. For the Yigret team, email service means huge operating expenses every moment.
Even though it is clear that this expenditure is completely worth it, this does not prevent the Yigrit team from creating other businesses through email technology.
Open email technology was originally proposed by Carol Bartz, the head of the software services business.
As the Yigrit portal is a powerful tool for gathering user groups, the portal team naturally disagrees.
The dispute between the two parties finally ended up on Simon's side.
Carol Bartz originally acquired the enterprise services business of email. However, so far in operation, the Bartz team has also discovered that instead of having Yigret provide direct email services, it is better to directly provide users with a complete set of webmail technologies and solutions, as well as the remaining server maintenance and email technology. Management and further some sensitive matters related to the content do not need to be involved by Yigret.
Doing so can, on the one hand, minimize the company's operational investment in enterprise-level email services and avoid legal risks related to information leakage.
It was the latter reason that struck Simon.
Although privacy regulations in the Internet field have not yet appeared in the United States, this does not mean that Igret does not need to bear relevant risks.
Operating a large email user base, Yigret Company actually encounters hacker attacks very frequently, and the company's security team has become larger as a result.
Now, if it only provides technology and services, and users are responsible for the management of email addresses, Igret can get rid of a large part of the responsibility after an information leakage incident.
There are also many more long-term considerations.
For example, the U.S. government’s inevitable surveillance of the Internet field.
Later, the United States was always accustomed to accusing other countries of stealing Internet information and threatening network security. Simon did not know what other countries did, but the U.S. government's monitoring of the Internet has been exposed more than once.
In the original timeline, after the 9/11 incident, the Patriot Act promoted by the Bush administration was actually a surveillance bill.
The bill stipulates that the US government has the right to access citizens' emails in the name of national security.
Based on the long-standing surveillance habits of the U.S. government, even without 9/11, Simon can be sure that the U.S. government will use other reasons to intervene in the Internet in the future.
If there is only one email service platform on the Internet, then, regardless of whether it agrees to the U.S. government's monitoring requirements, Igret will face strong pressure.
Now, if it voluntarily gives up its monopoly on e-mail technology and a large number of e-mail service providers and a larger number of private or corporate e-mail servers appear in the Internet market, the U.S. government will not have to bear the pressure no matter what it wants to do. Then there’s the Ygritte family.
Moreover, by now liberalizing e-mail technology and quickly promoting Igret's standards, other companies can also avoid developing alternative technologies.
Yigrit Company no longer provides a full set of services and no longer limits servers to the Yigrit network platform. Users can build their own servers and process information by themselves. This allows many companies that are concerned about confidentiality issues to accept this service. Therefore, it is conducive to the wider promotion of email services.
In order to finalize this matter, Simon specially spent a few days in San Francisco to discuss the overall details of the open email technology with the Eaglet team.
It happened that the California Senate candidate accused the Westeros system of controlling the Internet industry. The plan had just been finalized. In response, the Ygrit team held a press conference with great fanfare to announce it.
Of course, after several disputes and compromises, this technology will still be a restricted openness.
In the short term, the technology will only be open to companies and government departments, and groups that have received technology authorization will not be able to provide email services to the public unless permitted.
Doing so can obviously avoid the emergence of competitors of Ygriet Mailbox.
Moreover, this restriction imposed by Yigrit Company seems completely reasonable to outsiders.
However, Simon doesn't actually intend to have complete control over not allowing other providers to appear.
In fact, after the plan was completed, the Igret team began secret negotiations with Microsoft and AOL.
As long as an agreement can be successfully reached, AOL and Microsoft will launch their own e-mail services.
Of course, it is impossible to license this technology only to mainland enterprises in the Westeros system. Faced with many applicants, Igret Company is also looking for other foreign partners in the Westeros system.
This is until September 16, when Simon returns to Los Angeles, and "Desperate Housewives", which Daenerys Entertainment is focusing on for the USA TV network this fall, is about to officially launch.