Because it was not yet time for Google to ring the bell, Li Mu stayed in Boston for two more days.
For the past two days, he had been staying in the hotel's presidential suite. Su Yingxue was picked up by the driver after class every day and sent back to school before class the next day.
When Harvard leaders heard that he had come to Boston, they insisted on inviting him to have dinner with him. Li Mu originally didn't want to agree, but considering that Su Yingxue was still studying here, he accepted the invitation.
However, Li Mu did not ask the Harvard leaders to treat him. Instead, he found a Michelin restaurant in downtown Boston and invited all the Harvard leaders over, and he also brought Su Yingxue with him.
It is said that Chinese people pay attention to human relations and society, but in fact, Westerners are also the same.
Harvard hopes to maintain a good relationship with Li Mu, and Li Mu hopes that they will try their best to provide convenience to Su Yingxue in the future. Everyone will get what they need, which can be regarded as a win-win situation.
These few days in Boston were a rare moment of relaxation for Li Mu. He stopped caring about work after meeting Mark Zuckerberg. He ate, drank and had fun every day, enjoying the two-person world in a foreign country with Su Yingxue, both physically and mentally. All were greatly relaxed.
However, Chen Ze was not so comfortable.
He lives alone in a luxury suite of a hotel and is driven crazy by boredom every day.
It was snowing heavily in Boston and it was too freezing to do anything outside, so he could only stay in his room and watch TV for three days.
In his words, his English is not that good, and he barely understands it even when watching TV. It is as boring as it is boring.
When he was about to leave Boston, Li Mu first sent Su Yingxue back to Harvard. After saying goodbye to her, he went to Boston Airport.
Boston is very close to New York. The straight-line distance is only about 300 kilometers, and the flight time by jet plane is even less than an hour.
It took off from Boston at two o'clock in the afternoon and landed in New York at three o'clock.
After the group arrived in New York, Larry Page and several other Google executives went to the airport to greet them in person.
For Larry Page, it means a lot to both Google and himself to have Li Mu come and ring the bell with him when he goes public.
Google's business as a whole is relatively simple at this stage. If you want the market to have more confidence in Google, you can't do without the platform of big names. At this stage, for Internet companies, Li Mu's platform has the best effect.
Larry Page even thinks that it would be even better if he could be invited to participate in the bell-ringing ceremony when Makino Technology rings the bell in the future.
…
In order to show his attention, Larry Page rented a fleet of state guests from New York and gave Li Mu the highest courtesy.
In a stretched Lincoln sedan, Larry Page said to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, the bell time is 9:30 a.m. the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow night, there will be a private small cocktail party at your hotel, and everyone will come. He is a big figure in the Internet industry and the capital circle. I wonder if you would be interested in participating?"
Li Mu nodded and said, "Okay."
After speaking, Li Mu suddenly thought of something and asked Larry Page: "Larry, I want to buy a company that makes navigation and satellite maps. Do you have any good recommendations?"
At this stage, Google has not launched a map business. Li Mu has been wondering what his Internet resources can do for the future Makino Automobile Group. In addition to Android and IOS being able to develop interactive entertainment systems for cars in the future, Li Mu also wants to Let’s solve the car navigation issue.
Although only a few cars are equipped with LCD screens now, and even fewer are equipped with navigation, in the future, navigation service will be the most frequently used service by car owners, and there will be almost no such service.
However, the difficulty of using car navigation is almost a common feeling among car owners all over the world. There are several main reasons for this:
First, the in-car navigation map is lagging behind and cannot be updated;
Most in-car navigation data uses a navigation card, and the map is built into the SD card. This is completely offline navigation. Map update is a very difficult problem, unlike mobile phone navigation, which can be updated at any time;
Second, the map services provided by car manufacturers are not sophisticated enough and are basically just confusing. They are far inferior to the map services provided by Internet companies such as Google, AutoNavi and even Baidu;
Third, the information input of car navigation is a huge drawback;
Most car navigation inputs rely on the scroll wheel. Whether it is inputting English or Chinese pinyin, it takes a long time to input back and forth with the scroll wheel. What takes a few seconds on the mobile phone will take several minutes to switch to the car navigation. Just this step alone has troubled many users. block out the door;
Fourth, the sound of car navigation will conflict with the car audio, and many car manufacturers have not done a good job in optimization;
If the car audio is listening to music or radio, and then the car navigation is turned on, the feeling of the two sounds conflicting back and forth is very headache-inducing. Often the experience on both sides is very poor, which is not as good as mobile navigation, mobile navigation and car audio. The sounds are separated, and the occasional navigation prompts when listening to music will not conflict with each other.
Li Mu believes that the main reason why these three car navigation pain points cannot be solved is that car manufacturers do not have Internet genes, and there are no revolutionaries in the industry, and no one wants to make progress.
In fact, it does not cost much to install an LCD screen in a car, and the apparent configuration of the LCD screen is extremely user-friendly. Most users are willing to pay for it, and if the original factory does not have an LCD central control, Many users even spend their own money to upgrade.
The cost of installing a GSM module in a car is not high, and it is not that difficult to connect the car to the Internet.
If you can acquire a navigation company, build a refined global navigation system based on GPS, embed this navigation system directly into your own car central control assembly, and then carefully implement human-computer interaction, you will already be able to lead the global car industry. A lot of business.
If we add the GSM module and communicate with local operators about a more preferential data service, we can not only connect the car to the network, but also update the map data in real time. In that case, the entire vehicle will be more intelligent than global car manufacturers. Much ahead.
At this stage, mobile data services are still 2G. The data cost seems relatively high, but in fact it is easy to solve it with operators. Back then, Nokia had a gaming phone model called Nokia QD. In order to facilitate QD users to download games, Nokia launched it together with China Mobile A mobile phone card with unlimited traffic in 2G mode only costs a dozen yuan per month to rent. There were no 3G, 4G, or 5G at that time. The speed of the unlimited traffic card was the same as others, but the traffic cost was huge. reduce.
This proves that it is completely possible to negotiate with the operators.
If it's just map update traffic, it doesn't actually occupy a lot of traffic. Plus, I'm a big customer anyway. If I'm in China, I should be able to negotiate with the operator for a monthly cost of less than ten yuan.
At present, most car manufacturers provide a three-year warranty. When the time comes to provide three-year data traffic, it will only cost two to three hundred yuan. However, with this function here, even if all costs are added to the car price, then It is completely acceptable to consumers to increase some profit margins.
As for the conflict between the navigation sound and the car audio, Li Mu feels that it is enough to build a very ordinary high-frequency speaker directly into the car navigation, facing the driver's seat, and specifically serving the navigation.
The sound of car navigation is mainly for hearing clearly, but experienced users know that if the bass is heavy, the speaking voice will be muddy, and tweeters without bass are the most friendly to human voices. Think about it carefully, KTV’s The microphone is OK for singing, but the speech is muddy and has a strong roar. However, the large speakers in the school without bass can hear the human voice extremely clearly when broadcasting.
This is also the key to why the cheap radio speakers that the old man listens to have no bass and the music is a mess, but the radio and storytelling experience is very good.
Car audio is mainly for listening to music. If navigation sound is mixed in, it will not only affect listening to music, but also affect listening to navigation. More importantly, it will affect the experience of other passengers.
If a cheap tweeter is installed separately and the sound field is angled from the center console toward the driver, the cost is very low, but the benefits are many.
The first is to ensure that it does not affect the vehicle's audio and music listening, the second is to ensure that the driver can hear clearly, and the third is to ensure that it does not affect other passengers.
If navigation is not used, the tweeter is turned off and has no effect at all.
In this way, the practicality of car navigation will be greatly improved.
It can definitely make the consumer experience much better than that of traditional cars.
Larry Page didn't know Li Mu's specific idea of acquiring a navigation company, but when he heard that he wanted to acquire such a company, he immediately blurted out: "What a coincidence, Mr. Li, I happen to have this idea too! We can do it together." This is what happened!”
Li Mu was surprised at this time and blurted out: "You also want to acquire the navigation company?"
"Yes!" Larry Page said: "We have discussed before that we want to add a map function to Google, but it is too troublesome to build a global map by ourselves. Not only do we have to rent satellites and buy map copyrights, but also The time cost of investing in a large number of surveying vehicles and surveying personnel is too high, so we have the idea of acquiring a satellite mapping company."
Li Mu didn't expect that Google would prepare Google Maps at this time, so he couldn't help but ask: "Do you have a goal?"
"Yes." Larry Page did not hide anything from Li Mu, and immediately said: "There is a map company in the United States called Keyhole, and we are preparing to communicate with them about a wholly-owned acquisition."
Li Mu asked in surprise: "Isn't Keyhole a US military reconnaissance satellite system? I really want to see it in a military magazine... The US government allows you to acquire it?"
"No, no." Larry Page said with a smile: "Although the company's name is Keyhole, it is not the same thing as the US military's Keyhole system."
Li Mu nodded and asked, "How strong is this company?"
"It's great." Larry Page said: "Not only do they have a strong data reserve, but they also have strong mapping and development capabilities. Their own Keyhole Markup Language is a set of protocols that allows multiple users to participate collaboratively. This It is of great significance to create a satellite map product that global users can participate in in the future."
Li Mu instantly thought of a famous product of Google: Google Earth.
It turns out that everything comes from this!
(End of chapter)