thebusnovel Chapter 293 Can't it be copied?
Chapter 293 Can't it be copied?
March 28, 1998, 7:40 PM.
Redmond, Microsoft Campus.
The door to Ballmer's office was ajar, and a blinding white light shone through the crack.
Jim Olson stood in the doorway, holding the report he had just retrieved from the printing room. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
"Come in."
Ballmer stood with his back to the door, facing the window. Outside, it was a March night in Redmond; only a few employee cars remained in the parking lot, and the streetlights cast orange halos in the damp, chilly air.
Olsen placed the report on his desk and took a step back.
"Starry Night's weekly revenue from virtual products," he said softly. "A total of 940,000."
Ballmer didn't move; his face was reflected in the windowpane, his expression blurred.
The silence lasted for more than ten seconds.
"What are the ICQ data for today?" Ballmer asked, his voice flat.
Olsen's Adam's apple bobbed. "Daily active users have dropped by 4.7%, weekly active users have dropped by 3.1%, and ICQ doesn't have any paid features yet, so there's no paid data."
"Of course they didn't." Ballmer turned around. "We spent $4.3 million to buy ICQ, and three months later, what have they handed over? A pirated Outlook integration, a file transfer app copied over six months."
He walked back to his desk, didn't look at the report, opened a drawer, took out a document, and threw it on the table.
"This is ICQ's product roadmap." He pointed to the cover. "Space feature - planned for June. Group chat feature - planned for August. Level system - planned for the first quarter of next year. And Xingyu launched all of these two weeks ago, plus a paid model that we never even thought of."
Olsen did not speak.
"Call the ICQ people over," Ballmer said. "Now."
Forty minutes later.
Jonathan Meyer, ICQ’s product director, sat in the visitor’s chair in Ballmer’s office, his shirt collar unbuttoned and beads of sweat on his forehead.
The screen showed a video call, with ICQ's CEO remotely connecting. The video was slightly delayed, and the audio was intermittent.
"The spatial functionality needs a re-architected front-end," Mayer attempted to explain.
"Do users care about the architecture?" Ballmer interrupted him.
Meyer stopped.
"Users only care about whether something exists or not," Ballmer said. "If Xingyu has it and ICQ doesn't, users will go to Xingyu."
He stood up, walked half a circle around the desk, and stopped in front of Meyer.
"I'm giving you two weeks." His voice was low. "Space, group chat, levels—all the features that Star Language has, ICQ must have."
"The experience-based algorithm for the ranking system requires..."
"If you can't design, can't you at least copy?" Ballmer was getting angry.
"User data migration..."
"Let them migrate manually. Provide tutorials, and if that's not enough, provide them to customer service." Ballmer returned to his seat. "All features, completely free."
Meyer looked up.
"free?"
"Free," Ballmer said. "If StarTalk costs $4.99, we'll offer it for free. If StarTalk costs $9.99, we'll still offer it for free. We want users to know that ICQ is a product that truly cares about its users."
"But this will affect our income..."
"Does ICQ generate any revenue?" Ballmer asked, looking at him. "You've been online for three years, and you haven't charged users a single penny?"
Meyer remained silent.
"Money isn't the problem," Ballmer leaned back in his chair. "The problem is market share. If we let StarTalk continue to expand, we won't be able to catch up no matter how much money we spend in two years. Right now we're losing features, later we'll lose users, and after that we'll lose the entire instant messaging market."
He paused for a moment, then said, "You only have two weeks. I need to see a new version of ICQ by May 10th."
The CEO on the other end of the video call finally spoke: "Server expansion requires a budget..."
"I'll approve it for you," Ballmer said through gritted teeth.
"The development team needs more staff—"
"trick."
Marketing and promotion—
"I'll have the PR department cooperate." Ballmer glanced at the clock on the wall; he couldn't be bothered to talk to these incompetent people anymore. "Now, get back to work."
When Meyer walked out of the office, the corridor was completely quiet. He stood at the elevator entrance, watching the floor indicator light tick by tick, with only one thought in his mind: two weeks, forty people, to replicate a product that already had four months of code from scratch.
The elevator doors opened. He stepped inside and leaned against the cold metal handrail, just as cold as his heart.
At 9:20 p.m., the lights in the ICQ temporary project operations room were still on.
Jonathan Meyer stood in front of the whiteboard, looking at the four words he had just written:
Space, group chat, level, skin.
Behind me, only twenty-three of the forty workstations had their screens lit. Someone was asleep at their desk, face resting on the keyboard, a line of code only half-finished on the screen. Someone was eating cold pizza with iced coffee, the sound of the dough breaking as they chewed could be heard.
"The interface documentation for the space module," Meyer said.
An engineer placed three sheets of printing paper on the table.
"Group chat message synchronization solution".
Another engineer handed over a floppy disk.
Meyer took the floppy disk but didn't insert it into the computer. He placed the floppy disk on the printout and pressed down the curled-up label with his fingertip.
"The experience-based algorithm for the ranking system—"
"It's not finished yet." The engineer lowered his head. "The distribution of Xingyu's experience points is not linear. We've been capturing packets for three days and have only managed to reconstruct a rough curve."
"Approximately how much?"
「等级1到5需要200经验，5到10需要800，10到15需要2400。后面我们还没测出来。」
Meyer was silent for three seconds.
"Let's use a linear algorithm first," he said. "From 1 to 20, 500 per level. We can modify it later if we can restore it."
"Then the user's level will be artificially inflated—"
How many users are at Star Language Level 15?
The engineer retrieved the data. "Public data shows approximately 3%."
"ICQ users don't need to know they have a fake level," Meyer said. "They only know that their level is higher than Xingyu's."
The engineer remained silent.
Meyer walked to the window. Outside was the central lawn of the Microsoft campus, where the automatic irrigation system was running at night, and the water mist shimmered with tiny white light under the streetlights.
He recalled that in 1995, when Netscape Navigator was at its peak, he also sat in such a makeshift war room, trying to replicate in two months what Netscape had spent three years developing.
Netscape later lost.
It wasn't that we lost because IE copied us, it was because we lost in the minds of users.
He turned around and looked at the four words on the wall.
He recalled what Ballmer had said that afternoon:
"Users only care whether it exists or not."
He doesn't know if he's right or wrong.
All he knew was that, six hundred miles away, Ling Yun must also be sitting in a room with the lights on tonight.