Simon has already arranged that the operation of this mid-term election has a high priority within the Westeros system, and he has previously told the heads of various companies to cooperate.
Paul Spaihts brought up the Amazon union issue with Simon today. It was probably because of communication problems with Alice that Simon had to come forward in person. Simon also knew that his former housekeeper had a strong and stubborn personality, and within the Westeros system, he was probably the only one who could suppress her.
As for the union, Simon's attitude will not change.
However, there are priorities. If it cannot further increase its influence in Washington through this mid-term election, the increasingly large Westeros system will only encounter more targets and obstacles.
Promising Paul Spaihts that he would talk to Alice in person, Simon had lunch with her and then took a helicopter on the banks of the Hudson River to Greenwich, Connecticut.
There are two meetings here in the afternoon.
The financial information company founded by B Girl, which has been renamed from Alphabeta to Alia, has confirmed that it will officially release Alia software on October 3.
Prior to this, Alia’s trial scope had actually been expanding.
Faced with this aggressive latecomer that relies on the Westeros system, Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg finally no longer remained silent. It formally filed a lawsuit with the Southern District Court of New York half a month ago, alleging Alia’s infringement of multiple Bloomberg terminals. requesting a ban on the dissemination and sale of this software on the grounds of a patent.
Not only that, Bloomberg also complained to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Alia had multiple settings that violated securities trading regulations in terms of customer information storage. These loopholes can easily be exploited for untraceable insider trading, so it also requested the SEC to intervene. Limit the use of Alia software in the financial industry.
Business competition is never easy to reason about.
When entering the business world, if a person thinks that success can be achieved simply by relying on hard work and integrity, the result will be nothing.
Especially in modern business competition, the core is intrigue and deception, using every possible means. As long as it can suppress competitors, economic, legal, political... various means, as long as they can be used, will definitely be used.
In the end, the winner is the king and the loser is the loser.
In Simon's memory, the US government's takedown of the French industrial giant Alstom was the most typical case of modern business war.
The appearance of this incident seems to be that the US government is suppressing French companies. The core is General Electric's all-round attack on Alstom. In the entire incident, because of the deep-rooted influence of American industrial giants in Washington, the US government is just a pawn.
Those large Internet companies that appear to be leading the world's technological trends were all industry models before the scandal was exposed. After the scandal was exposed, they probably felt a bit ironic and could only quietly say "Don't be evil" The high-sounding corporate motto was quietly removed.
And Facebook.
Public rumors are that Zuckerberg started developing it when he was studying at Harvard in order to collect information about beautiful girls in the school. The reality is that Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook from several other classmates. The classmates came up with the idea of developing Facebook. I heard He said that Xiao Zha's skills were good, so he brought him in to work together. After Xiao Zha understood the general idea of the project, he left and worked alone, thus Facebook was born.
Litigation over this dispute continued until Facebook went public.
It was a big benefit at the beginning. Facebook later directly established an 'early bird system'. The core of this seemingly inspiring system is not that stupid birds fly first, but to find good ideas from other companies. If stupid birds fly later, copy them directly. .
Michael Bloomberg has packaged himself as a very typical Jewish businessman, living a simple life and being passionate about charity.
Let’s not pursue the others.
At least one thing, this is indeed a very 'qualified' businessman.
Then there is the Alia software.
Bloomberg’s lawsuit is actually not groundless or untargeted.
As a latecomer, if it wants to enter the field of financial information, it is impossible for Aaliyah to bypass Bloomberg, which has been very successful in recent years.
In fact, there is no bypass.
Before developing Alia, Alia's team conducted a very detailed study and analysis of the Bloomberg terminal, many of which used some less than compliant methods.
After ten years of development, the Bloomberg terminal has hundreds of functions, large and small. However, in actual applications, less than one-tenth of the functions are frequently called. This very core confidential data is the basis for the development of Alia by Alia.
How the data was obtained is not clear to outsiders.
However, in order to avoid potential legal risks, considerable preparations have been made during the development of Alia software. First of all, in terms of the most basic software program development, Alia uses a completely different design language from the Bloomberg terminal. Other aspects such as software interface , analysis models, etc., and try to distinguish them from the Bloomberg terminal as much as possible. The Alia team even specially set up a new set of professional terms to show its pioneering work.
Now, since the confrontation has begun, the two sides need to compete in terms of comprehensive strength in all aspects.
If it were other start-ups of the same type with a shallow foundation, it would be difficult for them to withstand Bloomberg’s lawsuit bombardment and other sieges. In the end, they would probably go bankrupt or be absorbed by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg has been established for ten years and has become more and more successful, but no similar competitors have emerged. This is part of the reason.
After ten years of smooth sailing, Michael Bloomberg finally found a hard nut this time.
The very hard kind.
If they want to use the usual litigation bombardment again, Aria Company, backed by the Westeros system, is enough to compete, or even exceed it, in terms of legal resources and financial support.
If you want to use political means, the results are even more difficult to predict.
Of course, there is also the most direct commercial confrontation.
It is actually not impossible for Bloomberg to kill Aaliyah in its early stages of development. It is a good possibility to launch a simplified version of the cheap Bloomberg terminal as soon as possible to quickly encroach on the low-end market.
However, it seems simple, but it is even more difficult to implement.
Dow Jones and other established financial information companies have clearly realized the threat of Bloomberg over the years. The key to why they have not been able to launch similar products is that they are constrained by their already very mature core business models. Although the service models provided by these established financial information companies are not as advanced as Bloomberg's , but it also has a fairly large user base. The development of products similar to Bloomberg terminals is likely to affect the interests of its core business model.
Today's Bloomberg may be far from reaching the peak in Simon's memory, but the company has begun to be limited by its own business model.
Diving to the bottom seems to be a very feasible idea, but if you are not careful, it may cause the entire Bloomberg company to fall apart.
The reason is also very simple.
The current fee for the Bloomberg terminal is as high as US$15,000 per year. Alia directly set the annual fee at US$1,500, one-tenth of the price of the Bloomberg terminal.
The increasingly complex and diverse functions of the Bloomberg terminal are inherently redundant for most customers. If a cheap version is launched, if it wants to gain market share, it will inevitably need to move closer to the one-tenth of its functions that are frequently used. , once users discover that the cheap version that costs only one-tenth of the price seems to be barely enough for use, replacing the professional $15,000 version with the cheap $1,500 version will be a devastating disaster for Bloomberg.
Therefore, ideas that seem feasible are actually the least feasible.
In comparison, Aaliyah, which operates with relatively low operating costs, can continue to sprint towards high-end customers through continuous accumulation.
Aaliyah’s current product layout already shows this ambition.
In addition to a relatively wide range of ordinary users, Alia has begun to provide Alia software to grassroots employee groups of major Wall Street giants.
Everyone knows that the grassroots level of an enterprise will inevitably penetrate into the upper levels of a company's pyramid in the future.
As these grassroots employees gradually grow into management, they have become accustomed to Alia's software ecosystem. After several years of growth, this software has become mature enough. Then, even if they are able to pay in the future, those Wall Street elites will just habitually continue to use Alia instead of spending extra time and energy to adapt to another unfamiliar financial information terminal.
Overall, Simon would not take Bloomberg’s lawsuit lightly, otherwise he would not have dedicated a few hours this afternoon to attend Aaliyah’s internal meeting. However, he is not particularly worried. As long as he handles it properly, it will be nothing more than a protracted litigation wrangling.
Just like Apple and Samsung.
The lawsuit has been going on for several years, and even if it does lose and some infringed patents cannot be used, Alia will definitely have developed an alternative.
Other investigations, such as those of the SEC, are nothing more than taking advantage of the situation.
Greenwich, Aria headquarters.
Regarding the end of the meeting to deal with Bloomberg's attack, Simon did not let everyone leave the meeting immediately, but put forward an idea that he had recently come up with: "Everyone should see that Bloomberg cannot swoop down to compete with us, so it can only use unconventional methods. Competition means, but have you ever thought about whether you can really successfully hit the high end in the future?"
Everyone in the conference room heard Simon's question and looked at each other. Girl B spoke first: "Simon, actually I didn't think that far ahead. The key now is to do the things in front of us well. I remember you used to do it well." This reminds me to, um, take it one step at a time."
Simon smiled and nodded, but said: "However, while everyone is here today, we might as well discuss it."
At first, I thought that even if it failed to hit the high-end market in the end, as long as it firmly defended the low-end market, Aaliyah's future scale would not be much worse than Bloomberg. . Just like companies such as Wind and Flush in China in my memory, some people stick to institutional customers, while others face the general public. They compete with each other, but each is also very nourishing.
However, if it cannot defeat Bloomberg, it will be a bit regretful after all.
Since Simon said this, everyone also expressed their opinions, and occasionally some good ideas popped up.
After listening patiently for half an hour, Simon said again: "Everyone's ideas are very good, now let me tell you what I think. In my opinion, Bloomberg's ecological model is somewhat similar to Apple's Macintosh system. The advantages are It is self-contained, quite complete, and has obvious shortcomings. It is a very closed ecosystem. Frankly speaking, Alia is an imitator of Bloomberg Terminal, just like Microsoft's Windows system comes from Apple's Macintosh."
As Microsoft continues to erode the market, Apple's recent decline has been very obvious.
The entire new technology field is enjoying the dividends brought by the rise of the Internet industry. As a pioneer in the new technology industry, Apple is suffering from a continuous decline in market share. This year, it will even suffer serious losses that have not been seen in many years. The declining trend is almost irreversible.
Simon compared Microsoft and Apple to Aaliyah and Bloomberg. While everyone in the conference room was slightly excited, there were also some expressions of enlightenment.
Girl B, who was still most familiar with Simon, spoke first and tentatively asked: "Simon, what do you mean, we should choose 'open'?"
Simon nodded and said: "The Bloomberg terminal tries to provide all the functions that users need and is unwilling to cooperate with other companies. Naturally, the price of its own products will remain high due to expensive development and operation costs. There is no need for Aaliyah at all. Imitate this. Although it will not be officially released until next month, this software has already made a very good start. There is no future in imitating it. Next, you must try to find your own path."
At this point, Simon paused for a moment, giving everyone time to digest, and then continued: "My opinion is that you can refer to Microsoft's rise, use the Alia platform as the core, and attract other collaborators to develop other relative products for this platform. For niche and obscure functions, users do not need to bear the expensive fees like Bloomberg terminals. They only need to purchase services regularly and quantitatively when needed. In this way, Alia can maximize its functions while saving money and time as much as possible. The costs, and even a lot of legal risk, can be passed on.”
An Aria executive in the conference room waited for Simon to finish and asked: "But, Mr. Westeros, if we do this, what if Bloomberg follows suit? Their market appeal is far greater than ours."
Simon said: "Business models have never been easy to imitate. The functional services of the Bloomberg terminal are already very complete, and its closed ecosystem has been formed, so it is impossible to change rashly. Alia is just a newborn. It is very malleable. Moreover, because of its low cost advantage, Alia must have a very large user base, which provides a sufficient user base for companies that rely on the Alia platform. The price of the Bloomberg terminal is too expensive, which will inevitably limit the market capacity, at most a few With sales of 100,000 units, most of the profits were taken away by Bloomberg itself, which could not leave much room for survival for collaborators. Why Apple is losing ground to Microsoft now is not because its system is not good enough. The key is Microsoft's relative openness ensures that many companies are very happy to develop software for the Windows platform. Then, Apple's computer sales plummeted and its market share decreased, which will only further promote this trend."
As everyone nodded, another executive asked, "So, how do we get revenue from these dependent companies?"
Simon smiled and glanced at the other person. From the previous introduction, he knew that the other person was an excellent software engineer and a genius, but he was not very good at business operations and sophistication.
Not paying attention to Girl B on the other side covering her face in embarrassment, Simon explained patiently: "It's very simple. They provide services on our platform, and of course they have to pay us a commission. You can find out more about this after the meeting. Great Portal’s software mall.”