Chapter 1891 Grinding Stone

The Nasdaq had been falling for the better part of the year, with the index dropping back to around 1,000 points.

Compared to March 2000, it was only about one-fifth of what it had been, with trillions of dollars of bubble evaporating, and the market finally bottoming out.

Seemingly, it was only a drop from 1,400 points last year to the recent 1,000 points, but it meant a decline of nearly 30%.

Countless shareholders suffered heavy losses, and the wealth accumulated by some middle-class people vanished, suffering downgrades.

Su Yehao's side was constantly making moves.

Last year, he acquired PayPal and Netflix, while also integrating the gaming business, and successively invested in companies such as Apple and Amazon, becoming one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

This year, he was mainly busy consolidating and developing.

In June, Yanwenzi Group successfully issued $850 million in corporate bonds, greatly alleviating financial pressure. With a batch of companies starting to recover, the third quarter's revenue hit a new high, which excited shareholders.

As for Google, it was still competing with Yahoo for market share.

The proportion of new netizens using the Google search engine has exceeded that of Yahoo. The rise and fall of the two sides has made Google's business develop quite rapidly. A total of $230 million was used to successively acquire two Internet advertising service providers to improve its own advertising business, basically achieving a balance of payments.

In August, Su Yehao had just handed over the picture sharing business to Yanwenzi Group, and the video and audio content sharing website to Google. The two companies developed independently, and both performed quite well.

While he was making steady progress, other Internet giants who took the lead in getting out of the predicament were also not idle.

As soon as the bottom-fishing funds began to flow into Silicon Valley, a group of companies that had recovered began a new round of expansion plans. After the crisis, there would often be a wave of mergers where the big fish eat the small fish.

Therefore, Su Yehao was not surprised that eBay was planning to enter the mainland market, but he felt that the so-called investment of $500 million was not reliable. After all, eBay's total market value was only more than $2 billion now. If there was so much cash on the books, the stock price would not have fallen so badly.

After finishing the call with Ma, he quickly asked people to check the relevant situation.

It wasn't until he went to Sweet Fish Cinema to watch a movie that he received feedback from the assistant's office, telling him that eBay's CEO had been frequently contacting venture capital firms recently, and seemed to want to get a round of financing. There was no confirmation of the so-called $500 million investment plan.

After learning about this situation, Su Yehao was basically sure that this news was mostly a pie that eBay drew for potential investors, or it was unscrupulous media trying to attract attention, and they might have advertised 500 million RMB as 500 million US dollars.

Su Yehao himself often encountered similar things. For example, Sihai International's "100 Sihai Shopping Center" plan clearly only took out 10 billion in start-up funds, but it became a super project of 200 billion at the media, and insiders would only listen to it as a joke.

After leaving the cinema, Su Yehao personally returned a call to Ma, telling him to relax.

After Nangong Tian got into the car, she chirped:

"I said it wasn't reliable to throw so much money at once, a full 4 billion RMB. There are only so many netizens, are they going to give them free products? Your business is so big, Brother Hao, and you haven't invested too much money in the mainland. How dare an eBay make a splash? What do you say?"

Rubbing her head, Su Yehao said with a smile:

"Indeed, with the current size of the mainland Internet market, it won't be able to use that much money in the short term. I was a little worried before, thinking that eBay saw a blank market and had the courage to go all-in in the mainland. Sure enough, I still overestimated them."

The so-called blank market he was referring to was a B2C model similar to Jingdong and Amazon, which was equivalent to an online Walmart. The website purchased at low prices, established a warehousing and transportation platform, and sold it to consumers to earn the price difference.

Taobao's B2B and C2C models were doing okay, but this area was indeed still a blank market.

Su Yehao originally wanted to invest in Jingdong, but he never waited. Brother Dong was probably fanned away by the butterfly wings. Maybe he was selling computers in Zhongguancun, or maybe he changed his career to repair mobile phones somewhere.

Being able to meet Ma and the others was already a coincidence. The entire mainland Internet market, under Su Yehao's intervention, was very different from his previous life, and he almost monopolized it.

It was indeed difficult for others to emerge.

The market share was so high that Su Yehao had to actively support other small and medium-sized enterprises to compete with him, so as not to attract trouble due to his prominence.

He was really the only one who could do business like this.

Su Yehao continued:

"This time, I don't plan to interfere with eBay's investment plan. I think it's a good whetstone to let Taobao and other companies practice. I've helped them with the development direction, funds, talents, etc., and even created an ecosystem to divert traffic to each other. If they can still screw up the business, then it can only be said that it's God's will."

Jiang Yu, who had studied business management, interjected and said:

"The mainland's Internet companies are different from the highly competitive Silicon Valley. Under your protection, they are walking too smoothly and haven't experienced storms."

"Yes, it's time to give them a sense of crisis, so as not to let those executives mistake the resources and platform provided by me as their own skills, and they are all trying to start their own businesses every day."

Whether it was tAt or the game company, the number of executives who resigned and jumped out to work alone this year was much higher than last year.

Su Yehao never stopped them, but a few of them tried to divert traffic from tAt and play the trick of colluding with insiders. They have already been dealt with officially and sent in after being sued. It's good to get together and break up at other times.

With diversified assets to his extent, he wouldn't be hurt by problems with one or two companies, so even if the knife was broken in the end, Su Yehao could accept it.

Other companies worked hard to compete and rise to the top. If they could fail with such a high market share, he would rather invest in competitors to avoid wasting time on garbage assets.

…

More than ten o'clock that night.

Su Yehao unexpectedly received an email from Google's CEO, who hoped to acquire a Nasdaq-listed company called prie as soon as possible, and wanted the board of directors to approve it as soon as possible.

According to Google's current CEO, Eric Boyle, he was in New York for a meeting and had contacted prie's CEO this morning. It was expected that only a small premium would be required for the other company to agree to the acquisition and directly delist it through privatization.

Google didn't have much money on its books. After seeing the email, Su Yehao first checked prie's market value and found that it was only a mere $160 million, which made him feel relieved instantly.

After learning about prie's situation, Su Yehao was surprised to find that it was actually an Internet company that provided online booking for hotels, air tickets, car rentals, etc., creating a service platform for travelers, founded in 1998.

He checked and found that there were several similar companies, and this one was considered to be relatively large.

The business prospects were quite broad, and there was a complete opportunity to swallow it and create a new business similar to Google Reviews, so that Google could reach a new level.

In this regard, it can only be said that old ginger is still spicy. The acquisition target selected by Eric Boyle made Su Yehao very satisfied. It was neither eye-catching nor had great market prospects, and the key was that it was cheap...