Simon saw Martin Davis off, then had dinner with Robert Iger, who had specially flown to the West Coast for the afternoon meeting, and gave him some personal instructions.
After the acquisition of MCA, Robert Iger's position remained unchanged, still President of Daenerys Entertainment Group, but the authority he wielded significantly increased.
Over the next few years, while maintaining Daenerys Entertainment's advantage in television program production, Robert Iger's focus will shift to cable television business, with USA Network being the top priority.
Although this time MCA ultimately fell into Daenerys Entertainment's hands, Columbia and MGM, two of Hollywood's traditional seven major studios, had already been bought by overseas investors. Currently, foreign giants like Canada's Seagram Group and France's Vivendi Group are eyeing other Hollywood studios.
Therefore, the US government and media have realized a problem: to prevent more Hollywood studios from being acquired by foreign capital, lifting the merger ban between domestic US television networks and studios is already an irreversible trend.
Simon remembered that the lifting of this legal restriction would roughly be around 1994.
Immediately after, Disney acquired ABC, and later, CBS and NBC also changed hands and merged with Hollywood studio giants. News Corporation's Fox Network also completely broke free from many legal restrictions after that, gradually developing to a scale comparable to the traditional three major networks.
Speaking of which, if Simon were to mobilize the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and his own connections to lobby now, it wouldn't be impossible to lift the ban a year or two earlier.
However, doing so would not align with Simon's planned development pace for Daenerys Entertainment.
Daenerys Entertainment's next step will definitely be to merge with a national television network, completely finalizing its horizontal layout in the media and entertainment sector. However, this needs to happen after MCA is digested and integrated, and after Daenerys Entertainment completes its IPO.
For the next round of mergers and acquisitions, Simon still prefers cash acquisitions. In fact, in many corporate acquisitions, most acquired parties also hope to cash out directly. However, with an already heavy debt burden, Daenerys Entertainment is not suitable for taking on another large-scale debt at once, so it can only adopt a cash-plus-equity acquisition method.
In fact, if Daenerys Entertainment's market value is substantial enough at that time, even a complete equity acquisition would be very cost-effective.
As for the relinquished equity, once the company has sufficient funds, a stock repurchase can be carried out.
After dinner, when Simon returned to the Point Dume Estate, it was already past eight in the evening.
Today was Tuesday, and Janette had flown to the East Coast in the past few days to busy herself with Cersei Capital's affairs.
The Gulf War was largely decided and had essentially entered its concluding phase. Cersei Capital's Cersei Fund Management Company's fund hedging operations around this war were also coming to an end.
Having decided to forgo many upcoming opportunities like the British pound crisis, this operation could be said to be the last major market move the Cersei Fund management team would undertake without constraints.
According to preliminary statistics from New York, from the outbreak of the war on February 17th until now, roughly one month, Cersei Capital has already achieved over $1.6 billion in book profits, primarily from S&P 500 index-related futures that surged 25% in just one month.
After this operation, Cersei Capital will focus more on Apollo Management Company and BlackRock Asset Management Company.
The improvement in the overall US economic situation is conducive to the development of corporate mergers and acquisitions, asset management, and other businesses. Of course, Cersei Fund Management Company will still be retained, but it will lean more towards micro-hedging of specific stock and securities portfolios.
After a day of work, Simon took a shower, changed into a hoodie and casual pants, and checked the time. It was already past eleven in New York, and Janette must have been asleep, so he didn't call her. The woman never like answering calls at night, especially when they woke her up.
Simon, however, was a night owl. It was just past eight in Los Angeles, and he wasn't sleepy at all, so he went to the PC room on the first floor of the villa.
The computer room was like a mini personal computer museum, though certainly not as comprehensive as a real museum.
Simon arranged such a computer room mainly to facilitate his own checking of Ygritte's various IE browser versions for compatibility on different operating system platforms and computers with different configurations.
Speaking of which, Simon disliked the current state of multiple operating systems coexisting, and was quite resistant to many low-configuration personal computers. However, personal computers, which were generally quite expensive in this era, had not yet reached the point where they could be updated and replaced at will. Ygritte, wanting to acquire the most customers in the short term, had to be as compatible as possible with more platforms.
However, Ygritte's development of the IE browser also began to clearly lean towards Microsoft's Windows system. The functional updates of this operating system platform were more timely than those of other operating systems.
In the spacious room of over two hundred square meters, several rows of various personal computers were arranged. Simon casually selected three side-by-side IBM compatible machines with different configurations, turned them on, pulled out a chair and sat down. After the machines booted up, he casually connected to the internet and logged into his email.
He clicked open an email from Carol Bartz.
As expected, the female executive responsible for Ygritte's software business was once again discussing raising the price of the IE browser software in her email.
Based on the explosive growth of internet users in recent months, Ygritte estimated that the internet user growth in 1991 would definitely exceed 5 million. The installed base of IE browser software, due to the free trial programs launched by America Online and other internet access providers, would only be higher, possibly even reaching tens of millions.
According to the price of $10 per set for IE browser software, a tens of millions installed base would mean over $100 million in revenue.
From the time Simon brought Tim Berners-Lee to the US until now, in just two years, he had created an enterprise with software sales revenue exceeding $100 million, which was already very rare. However, Carol Bartz believed that the commercial potential of IE browser software was far from limited to this.
Simon, of course, understood the immense commercial potential of IE.
However, apart from Simon himself, most of Ygritte's internal executives felt that the pricing of the IE browser software was too low. For $10, one could get richer content and functions than most existing operating systems, which was practically like giving it away for free.
Especially during this time, with Ygritte completely monopolizing the patent for graphical interface browsers on the World Wide Web platform.
In the original timeline, Netscape was only one of the authorized vendors for graphical interface browser technology on the World Wide Web platform. Such a company easily broke through a market value of $1 billion in its IPO year.
Now, Simon had no intention of opening up patent licensing for the World Wide Web browser, so, at least on the World Wide Web platform, there would only be one browser software.
Even other versions of browsers that bypassed Ygritte's browser kernel would not be possible, because the most basic technical patents of the World Wide Web were also held by Ygritte. Other software manufacturers wanting to develop browsers would have to choose other network technology platforms.
However, given that World Wide Web technology had already gained a head start, other types of network technologies simply had little room for development.
Ultimately, this was a monopoly.
Simon had previously rejected Carol Bartz's suggestion to raise prices; the low-price strategy had been determined from the very beginning. After all, if the sudden price increase of the IE browser made industry manufacturers feel threatened by Ygritte's monopoly on World Wide Web technology, it was hard to guarantee that other manufacturers wouldn't temporarily support network technology standards based on other technologies.
Although other technical standards would be difficult to threaten World Wide Web technology, they would ultimately be a nuisance.
After a quick email reply telling Carol Bartz not to bring up the topic again, Simon began to browse other unread emails.
While he was busy, he heard the sound of high heels. Simon looked up from the computer screen. C-girl Claire placed a glass of water beside him, and she was holding a folder in her hand.
Simon smiled and gestured to the side: "Come online with me".
Claire placed the folder on the computer desk and sat down next to him. A pleasant fragrance wafted over, refreshing and invigorating.
Simon picked up the water glass, took a sip, then gestured towards the folder the C-girl had put down, asking, "What's this?"
Claire handed over the folder and said, "This is a business plan I've been working on recently, boss. Could you take a look at it first?"
Simon nodded, took the folder, and opened it.
The C-girl explained from the side: "The inspiration for this business plan came from some documents you showed us, boss. One of them was a discarded Ygritte blog activity proposal, which was a picture sharing activity. The reason it was rejected was that it was too difficult and cumbersome for users to upload pictures to the network. Moreover, mainstream digital cameras that can directly upload pictures to personal computers via floppy disks are too expensive. So I considered whether we could develop an affordable card camera specifically for sharing photos on the internet. Given the growth rate of internet users and most people's desire for self-expression, I believe this business plan has a lot of potential".
When Sandra first moved into the Ygritte personal homepage platform, Simon had given her a digital camera for sharing pictures.
He vaguely remembered that the Panasonic digital camera had a pixel level of only over 700,000, but cost as much as $6,000, which was more expensive than most mainstream personal computers at the time. It was indeed not something ordinary people could afford to play with.
Moreover, most personal computers at the time did not support image display very well. Only the latest models from the past two or three years, combined with Ygritte's IE browser software, could achieve relatively decent image display functions. But in reality, the display effect was only equivalent to the pixel quality of paper newspapers, completely incomparable to the 1080p monitors Simon remembered.
To adapt to lower-configured computers, IE at this time also specifically developed a no-image mode.
This was an inspiration Simon had from using mobile phones in his previous life.
The first semi-smart phone he remembered had only a 2.5-inch screen, supported touch, and used 2G network, so the internet connection effect was naturally predictable. The browser built into that phone supported a no-image mode when connecting to the internet.
Having been used to more advanced smartphones, browsing the internet on a candy bar phone would naturally be very uncomfortable. But for Simon, it had been his first encounter with a mobile phone, browsing news, reading novels, and logging into forums through the small phone screen, even if image display was turned off for network speed and data saving, it seemed to open up another world for him at the time.
Now, the increasingly rich Ygritte portal was the same for current users.
Even without images, the news, blogs, email, and even games provided by Ygritte were rich enough.
After all, the newspapers people read in this era did not have every page filled with a large number of images.
However, although Ygritte's IE browser performed very well in no-image mode for low-end computers, image display was definitely a trend.
Over the next few years, personal computers are destined to support increasingly rich multimedia functions, and image content, before the internet develops into the streaming media era, is also destined to be a crucial content category on the internet platform.
Coupled with Ygritte's early entry into social networking services, it will certainly increase users' desire to share images online. Therefore, the plan presented by the C-girl indeed has great feasibility.
As Simon flipped through the C-girl's business plan, his thoughts unconsciously drifted further.
It's not just the limitations of image uploading; current personal computers, whether it's software for operating system platforms or hardware surrounding personal computers, can only be described as scarce.
Ygritte's already initiated online software store plan can greatly enrich the software ecosystem of personal computers in the coming years.
However, in terms of hardware...
Just looking at the motherboard interfaces of personal computers at this time, one can see the situation.
Currently, mainstream personal computers generally only have two types of hardware interfaces: serial and parallel. Whether it's monitors, printers, keyboards, or mice, they can only be connected via these two interfaces. The network crystal head interface, USB interface, PS/2 interface, and even audio interface that Simon remembered are all nowhere to be seen.
The scarcity of interfaces actually means the scarcity of the personal computer peripheral hardware ecosystem.
America Online, when providing internet access to users at this time, due to the scarcity of hardware and interfaces, had to provide users with not only a modem but also a hardware network card that directly plugged into the motherboard and had a network cable interface.
In the C-girl's business plan, the digital card camera planned for development used 3.5-inch floppy disks as the image carrier, which was probably the only option for this camera to be promoted.
After all, apart from the floppy drives that were as common as serial and parallel interfaces on personal computers at the time, there were indeed not many other ways to conveniently and quickly transfer images from a digital camera to a computer and further upload and share them on the network.
As for flash memory and USB, which people later took for granted, what were those things?
Since they don't exist now, but there's a definite huge market demand, then this clearly means a potentially immeasurable big business.
Moreover, there's no need to develop too many interfaces; one USB is enough.
As long as USB or a similar interface solution is developed in advance, it is possible to try to build an entire hardware ecosystem around this interface. At that time, the application of this interface can be extended not only to digital cameras but also to keyboards, mice, MP3 players, mobile phones, speakers, and other hardware.
Don't underestimate it as just a small interface. If the annual installation volume reaches hundreds of millions, let alone the profits that the surrounding hardware ecosystem might create, just the patent licensing fees for the interface would be enough to make the developing company incredibly rich.
In Simon's memory, the Wi-Fi technology patent was held by an Australian university.
Just from the patent fees applied to various types of Wi-Fi chips, that university could easily enjoy over $1 billion in net income annually.
In comparison, the widespread application of USB technology is definitely far greater than that of Wi-Fi.