Steve Mitnick said: "Yes, but he said that this plan is too expensive, and you will never agree. But I think the most important thing you need now is money, right?"
"There is really no shortage of money," Eric said with a smile. Although the Firefly Group has just issued a huge bond of 8 billion US dollars, as long as Eric needs money, I believe that all banks in the United States will not refuse to provide Eric with a huge loan : "But what we lack is time. Computer operating systems have been developed for more than ten years, and there are already many mature operating systems on the market. Moreover, compared to developing a brand new operating system, bypassing our software It is obviously easier to develop a new web browser with a patent. Now that we have achieved an unmatched dominant position in this field, it would be too unwise to give up our advantage and go to other industries.”
In fact, the most important reason why Eric didn't say anything and couldn't say it is that Microsoft will launch the epoch-making Windows95 operating system next year. The release of Win95 means that Microsoft will unify the operating system. Another operating system will definitely become tasteless. If the time can be advanced five years, Eric will definitely agree to Steve Mitnick's plan without hesitation, and use the advantages of browser software to develop a web-based operating system. Netscape, which developed the first successful graphical interface browser in the original time and space, once proposed an operating system plan based on Netscape browser, and this plan was stillborn because of the rise of Win95. Later, Google I also planned to develop a free operating system based on Google Chrome, but after the news was released, there was no more content. It can be seen that after Win95, it is impossible to shake Microsoft's position in the PC era.
Steve Mitnick nodded disappointedly: "It seems that what you said makes sense."
Eric smiled. Although Steve Mitnick is a technical genius, he is somewhat idealistic after all. Such people are more pure, just like the two founders of Google in the original time and space, Eric can conclude that at least Steve Mitnick will focus more on technology research and development instead of trying to In order to make money, all organs are exhausted. actually. Eric feels that the more people who concentrate on a certain thing, the more they can get.
"Actually, you should be able to guess it," Eric waited for a while, and said proactively: "I am here this time to plan to integrate all three companies. The establishment of Yahoo Networks, IE and Hotmail will officially be renamed Yahoo Browsing Server and Yahoo Mail, Steve, are you interested in being the CEO of this company?"
"No, no, Eric," Steve Mitnick immediately shook his head violently: "You can let me sit on the computer screen for the rest of my life, but if you want me to sit like those company managers every day I'm going to go crazy dealing with those messy chores in the office or meeting room." After a pause, Steve Mitnick said again: "You'd better let Ian come, he's obviously better at running companies. Maybe I could be Yahoo's CTO (Chief Technology Officer)."
Eric was a little surprised, and then smiled: "I always thought you were quite similar to another Steve I knew, but now it seems that you two are completely different types of people."
Another Steve, of course, is Steve Jobs. Jobs is a man with a strong desire for control, and the guy in front of him is more inclined to be a technical madman who doesn't listen to the outside world.
"You mean Steve Jobs, right?" Mitnick turned the steering wheel and overtook a white business car, followed closely behind the two cars in front, and said reminiscently, "I bought a After a tosh, it was really a great personal computer at that time, a graphical user platform. The first multimedia function, and the processor speed of 8MHz, were far superior to the IBM personal computer at that time. Unfortunately, after Steve Jobs left .Apple hasn’t come out with anything good in years.”
…
More than half an hour later, three cars stopped in front of a white six-story office building near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the other side of the Charles River. After talking all the way, Eric almost cut off letting Steve Mitnick. Computer geniuses with nothing but technology at heart run Yahoo's mind. Although Steve Mitnick has a very high IQ, he has no intention of running a company at all, and forcing it will only backfire.
In addition to a few stores on the bottom floor of the office building. The upper five floors are all occupied by three companies. Currently, the three companies have a total of nearly 900 employees. Under the leadership of Steve Mitnick's three supervisors, Eric began to greet the staff in the open work areas on each floor one by one.
Walking into the office area on the second floor, although the space of this office building is very large, the average density of less than 200 employees per floor is not too much, but with the addition of a large number of office equipment, personal computers and other equipment, it looks messy and crowded a lot. However, seeing the appearance of Eric, the big boss behind the scenes, all the employees were very interested. Some bold female employees even found out a camera, and excitedly took Eric to take a series of photos together.
All the way to a lounge on the top floor, Eric sat down at the round table, smiled and said to several others: "When I first went to the Pixar studio, all the Pixar employees also gathered together. A very dilapidated and crowded office building, but now Pixar has its own 16-acre exclusive office park in Emeryville, San Francisco. I believe that the future achievements of the company in your hands will far exceed Pixar, so all this It's all temporary."
The three companies have been burning money for several years, and basically have little income. Of course, Steve Mitnick and others dare not expect a better office environment. Moreover, after discovering the growing potential of the three companies , They don't care even more about such trivial things as the office environment.
Ian Grenier, who is in charge of browser development, said: "Eric, I think this place is already great. So, why don't we take a look at the development results of IES, right here in my office, what you proposed The idea of a browser literal translation language is really genius, once IES is released, I don’t think anyone can surpass IE in the browser field.”
When Jeff Locke and Steve Mitnick heard Ian Grenier mentioning IES, they both showed eager expressions.
Eric smiled and glanced at Tina Brown with a blank face, shook his head and said with a smile: "I don't need it for the time being, everyone has worked for me for more than two years. Always show it, you know there is a place in Boston that can accommodate Nine hundred people throwing a party together?"
This time it was the turn of the three big men to show a blank look. Tina Brown realized that she hadn't signed the employment contract yet, so Eric deliberately diverted from this topic that seemed to involve company secrets. I don't mind either. As the most famous Vanity Fair party planner after the Oscar ceremony, Tina Brown is obviously the most experienced in this kind of thing, and said with a smile: "Eric, if you want to arrange a party for 900 people at one time, it is best to hold an open-air party." The party. The venue can only be chosen in a nearby park. I just know the phone number of the owner of the largest party company in Boston. They can contact the corresponding party venue as an agent, but if you want tonight, please contact the party venue urgently to arrange All kinds of drinks, food and other facilities require additional money.”
Eric smiled and said, "Then please contact me, Tina."
Tina Brown smiled slightly and said, "Okay, as you wish, boss." After speaking, she looked at Ian Grenier and the other three, "Can you lend me the phone?"
"Come with me, ma'am." Ian Grenier stood up and led Tina Brown into an office.
After arranging an evening staff gathering and having lunch together, Eric and Tina Brown returned to the reserved hotel together.
In the afternoon, I found a coffee shop, and Eric showed Tina Brown one by one the documents he had prepared, including the ultra-long equity incentive contract.
After confirming that she had no doubts, Tina Brown finally signed an agreement and formally joined Yahoo as the chief content editor.
…
Through the glass window of the hotel suite, I can see the Massachusetts Avenue downstairs connecting MIT and Harvard. On both sides of the street are buildings with extremely uneven heights and ages that make people with obsessive-compulsive disorder crazy. Pay attention to the metropolis with tens of millions of people. The entire Boston area has a radius of hundreds of kilometers and a total population of less than 5 million, and the permanent population of the urban area is only 600,000. Perhaps it is because of this that the municipal planning appears to be so "relaxed". There was a thick and chaotic breath.
As the boss, at the party in Boston Common on the other side of the Charles River last night, facing the enthusiastic employees of No. 900, even though he was very careful, he was still drunk and taken back to the hotel.
His mind was still a little swollen, Eric looked at the downtown area of Cambridge shrouded in the morning sun in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and stretched his body a little while thinking wildly. Just walked out of the room to the restaurant for dinner.
Seeing Eric walk into the restaurant, Tina Brown, who was eating by the window seat, nodded to him. After Eric walked over, she gestured to the breakfast she had almost finished, and said with a smile: "Try the Boston stuffed baked beans, which are rarely served in restaurants now, and I didn't expect to have them here."
Boston has a nickname that is ten times cuter than the Big Apple in New York. It is called Bean City, which originated from the dish called Boston Baked Beans in front of Tina Brown.
Eric is not a Westerner who is used to sweets. He was not sensitive to this kind of food stuffed with syrup. He sat down opposite Tina Brown and just ordered a sandwich and a glass of juice at random.
Tina Brown asked the waiter to remove her cutlery, sat patiently across from her and read today's newspaper, waited for Eric to finish his breakfast, and said, "Eric, I hope to take over Yahoo's business as soon as possible. The editorial team, in addition, the offices of the three companies I saw yesterday are really scattered, and it is difficult for me to concentrate on working in that environment. I called some real estate agencies yesterday, and there is an office building on the same street Because the original company went bankrupt, the two floors just happened to be vacant, and I hope to rent it."
Eric smiled and nodded and said: "I said, after you join the job, these are all things within your authority. However, there are still many things that you need to understand together recently, so there is no need to be so anxious. When I leave Boston, you Then you can let go of your hands and feet and do a big job.”
"A lot of things..." Tina Brown repeated, and said with a smile: "For example, about the IES thing yesterday?"
"Yeah, but that's just one part," Eric said, "The so-called IES is the code name of a computer language developed by the IE browser team and two other companies since the end of last year. The full name is IESScript. It is a brand-new scripting language that is different from traditional programming languages. Simply put, such as IE browser software, this software is mainly written in C language, but the C language code written by programmers cannot be recognized by computers. , needs to be compiled by special software and converted into a language that can be recognized and executed by the computer. The brand-new IES script language omits the compilation process, and web page programmers can directly write this language into the web page code, and then the IE browser Direct translation."
IESScript scripting language is a design idea proposed by Eric to Ian Grenier according to the JavaScript idea developed by Netscape Browser Company in his memory. For Ian Grenier, Jeff Locke and Steve For top computer technicians like Jeff Mitnick, some vague hints from Eric are enough for them to design a brand new IES scripting language by analogy.
Although Tina Brown didn't know much about computer knowledge, she still understood Eric's explanation, but she was still a little confused: "Eric, what is the function of this scripting language?"
"The main function of this scripting language is to make the originally static webpages realize dynamic changes. To give a simple example, such as webpage advertisements, the current Yahoo webpage can only simply embed a fixed advertisement in various Among the webpages with different content, although it is also possible to manually adjust the advertisement content of different pages, it is unrealistic to achieve complete manual operation in the face of millions of webpages in the future. But with the IES scripting language, we can Advertisements can be placed on webpages with different content more accurately, through dynamic code identification, movie information webpages can automatically place movie advertisements, and sports news webpages can display sporting goods advertisements.” Speaking of which, Eric drank After taking a sip of the juice, I gave Tina Brown some time to think, and continued: "Of course, these are not the most important. The most important point is that the IES scripting language will be open to web developers for free. This language It is also very easy to learn for people with a technical foundation. In one to two years, another scripting language in the same industry is unlikely to appear. This plan is in line with the Yahoo! Angel funds, the rapid promotion in two years is enough to establish the standard format of IES in web development. We have the patents of IES and IE browsers. In the future, all websites designed with IES scripting language can only be browsed through IE It can only be recognized by the device, I think, you should be able to realize what this means?" (To be continued.)