Chapter 2695 Questioning

In the dome library of Bill Gates' Utopia 2.0 mansion on the shore of Lake Washington in Seattle, Feng Yiping, who was dressed casually, raised his beer and said, "Bill, thank you for your kind arrangement."

At this time, in this world-famous mansion, Gates' wife was taking Feng Yiping's parents and Huang Jingping, who came with them, to visit - someone had to act as an interpreter.

At first, Feng Yiping was a little worried that his parents would not appreciate this mansion that made the Gates couple very proud, because as a son, he knew his parents' preferences very well.

They usually only sighed, "Amazing, amazing," when they saw the towering buildings.

Bill Gates's house with only a few floors would probably not catch their eyes.

That would be a bit embarrassing.

But in the end, he found that he really underestimated his parents, or the tour guide Melinda's skills. He followed them for a while and found that his parents were extremely interested in the smart facilities of this house, and were amazed at these digital life facilities that are not currently available on the market.

There is no need to remedy the situation by yourself, so as to avoid the embarrassing situation that the host takes out a carefully prepared dish, but the guest frowns when eating it.

"I like your parents very much," Gates said directly, "They have the kind of simplicity and calmness that people in the circle of fame and fortune cannot have, and they don't have the hypocritical courtesy and arrogance hidden in their bones."

This is also where Feng Yiping admires his parents. If they are good, they really say good, and if they are envious, they really envy them, but in fact they are not moved, let alone jealous. When they show it, they really have the taste of a worldly expert who looks down on everything.

"It's also due to the environment," Feng Yiping said, "My parents have lived in the countryside most of the time. I believe you should have heard Ballmer say that our place was very backward more than ten years ago."

"Isn't it thriving now?" Gates smiled, "Your parents can be so real and open-minded, which should also be related to you, because they have such an excellent child like you."

Indeed, they are not moved or jealous because they believe that their son can do the same, and may even be better.

"Aren't your parents the same?" Feng Yiping smiled.

He looked at the world-famous super-rich man sitting in his own library. Just like on many occasions, his shoulders slumped, his whole body huddled inward, or rather shrank inward, without any domineering aura, and he looked very low-key.

But in fact, how could this guy who has been the world's richest man for the most consecutive times really be like this?

Just look up and you will know.

In this dome library, if you look up, you can see a sentence on the ceiling, "When a person has struggled for a long time and sees his dream so close, he will not give up easily."

Feng Yiping searched it specifically, and it was a sentence from "The Great Gatsby".

How could a guy who engraved this sentence in a place where he could see it when he looked up be an ordinary person?

He took this sitting posture on many occasions, which was more lazy and indifferent than humble and low-key.

As for you scumbags and scumbags, it is not worth my attention, nor is it worth my even a glance.

"Haha," Gates smiled. In this respect, he really envied Feng Yiping.

His father is still alive, but his mother died of cancer in 1994 - that year, Bill Gates invested $94 million to establish the Gates Foundation.

"Okay, Feng, what do you want to talk to us about? Is it about the acquisition of Yahoo?"

"Yes, Bill," Feng Yiping nodded, "In my opinion, we have encountered the worst situation, just like the United States in 1941, and encountered a reckless Japanese who likes to gamble."

This also gave Gates a headache. They don't care about any opponents, but an opponent who doesn't seem to be very rational is really difficult to deal with.

"If this trend continues, the acquisition price will soon exceed $50 billion," Feng Yiping said.

Microsoft initially offered 39 billion, and Softbank strongly increased the price by 3 billion. After that, Microsoft raised it by another 2 billion, and the acquisition price has reached 44 billion.

The day before yesterday, Ballmer raised it by 1.2 billion again, but Masayoshi Son raised it more, 2 billion, that is, the current offer has climbed to 46 billion.

According to the increase in the price by both parties, it will definitely exceed 50 billion US dollars in two more rounds.

"In any case, with the size of Yahoo and its performance in recent years, I think that a premium of 80%, or even close to 100%, would never be a wise decision,"

"Bill, do you remember how much Yahoo's stock price was before you mentioned the acquisition in February? It was only 19.18 US dollars, and the total market value was less than 28 billion US dollars,"

"Do we really have to spend more than 50 billion US dollars to acquire such a web2.0 company?"

"So your opinion is to stop here?" Gates asked.

"We can certainly increase the price for one or two more rounds, but if we still can't reach an agreement, then I really think there is no need to work harder," Feng Yiping said.

"I know what you like about Yahoo. It is undeniable that although Yahoo's development has fallen into a slump, the Yahoo brand still has great value. We cannot deny Yahoo's status and importance in the Internet world,"

"At the same time, we must also admit that many of Yahoo's products, such as email, still have strong popularity,"

"More importantly, Yahoo also has many experienced Internet core personnel. It can even be said that some of them have accumulated the most Internet experience in the world."

After all, Yahoo was the first true high-tech Internet company.

"And I also understand that Microsoft is now eager to make achievements in the Internet field,"

Bill Gates sat up a little straighter.

Because Feng Yiping can be said to have revealed their real plan in one sentence.

It should be said that when Yahoo was founded, Microsoft actually didn't care much about Yahoo.

At that time, Yahoo was obviously a little afraid of Microsoft, so they did not introduce themselves as a high-tech company to the outside world, but always promoted themselves as a media company.

Later, this so-called "media" company quickly became a representative of high-tech companies in the United States and the world. Microsoft was quickly classified into the "Big Brother" group.

Domineering, conservative, refusing to keep up with trends...

But that's okay. After all, even if Yahoo's market value exceeds 100 billion US dollars, the gap with Microsoft is still very large.

But now, with the rise of more Internet companies, such as Google, Microsoft is really feeling the threat.

In the high-tech world, the "Microsoft model", that is, the high-profit model, has been the envy of everyone. However, the high selling prices of Microsoft products have also been criticized by many users around the world.

However, Google is different. In many cases, they provide products and services to end users for free, while charging high advertising fees from advertisers. Therefore, Google, which is “free” and practical, quickly wins the trust of many users. favorite.

The key is that Google's own revenue is not only very generous, but also growing very rapidly.

Some of Google's products, such as the browsers they developed, have not only successfully gained a foothold, but have also replaced some of IE's market share...

With all this, both Gates and Ballmer clearly know that today's Google is not the Yahoo that was still cautious in front of them back then.

Since they envy Google's model and hope to make a difference in the field of online advertising, then on the other hand, does Google have no ambitions in the field of office software and operating systems?

You know, Google's profits are now equally easy and can fully support them in doing such research and development.

Therefore, it can actually be said that the focus of Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo was not the assets of Yahoo Japan or the Japanese market that Feng Yiping said he was interested in. A large part of their intention was to target Google.

They cannot sit back and wait for Google to gradually erode their areas of expertise, and there is nothing they can do about Google.

"But I think such a price is definitely not worth it," Feng Yiping met Gates's eyes and expressed his final conclusion.

"Fon," Gates sat up completely, "So, this is why you asked for ownership to stop in the first place?"

"That is, at the beginning, you guessed the possible development later, or in other words, at the beginning, you were ready to give up?"

"Do you know? After knowing that we gave up, only SoftBank was happy," he paused and said softly, "and Google,"

"You are a major shareholder of Google, and you have a close relationship with the two founders,"