Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Chapter 1050 It is not easy for Gates to refuse

To put it simply, the alternative minimum tax introduced in the United States in 1969 is commonly known as the “rich man’s tax”, which is specifically targeted at wealthy people who have many tax avoidance channels; when it is specifically implemented, it coexists with the general income tax. If it is high or low, then tax will be levied as much as it is less.

The doorway in “tax” can be described as broad and profound.

Take “Oil King” Mark Rich, for example, after the United States sanctioned Iran in 1979, this man still secretly does oil business with Iran, and even challenged the old order of international oil transactions.

In order to clean up Mark Ritchie in one step, the United States charged him with tax evasion.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Mark Rich ran to Switzerland to take refuge. At the same time, he remotely controlled his disciples and continued to do oil business with Iran. As for a large number of American assets, including 20th Century Fox, they were all sold off.

The reason why the tax return of the richest man five years ago was so hyped is because the director behind the scenes is saving others by himself and is convinced that Tang Huan is also “unclear” about tax payment.

Ever since, after the New York Post attracted the admired people together, an analysis of “tax evasion” that tried to destroy the public idol of the richest man appeared insidiously.

But to their surprise, Tang Huan really dared to fight head-on.

While the “New York Post” published the headline on the front page of the richest man’s “tax evasion”, its nemesis “New York Daily News” used Tang Huan’s real tax return as evidence, and took great pleasure in the misfortune. The most ruthless ridicule and blow was launched in the power of the matter.

The two newspapers unanimously regarded this opportunity as the key to affecting market share. Therefore, the enthusiasm for mutual tears is not to be mentioned. The “New York Daily News” simply stood in the position of the richest man, and said all the most exasperating words, regardless of image and identity.

The most embarrassing thing about the “New York Post” is that it has just vowed to concoct that the richest man’s personal income in 1993 exceeded 200 million U.S. dollars, and he only paid 160 million U.S. dollars in income tax. “New York Daily News” used the most authoritative source to laugh at: Don’t be funny, Tang Guang paid more than 200 million U.S. dollars in taxes! Do you dare to be professional?

On the other hand, Tang Huan did not remain silent all the time. He wrote on his blog: My tax return has been put here, how about yours?

As a result, no one dared to take this stubbornly!

It is no exaggeration to say that this turmoil has made the richest man an undefeated golden body in economic terms.

The most ridiculous thing is that the New York Post, which has always claimed that newspaper sales are very satisfied, was exposed by a traffic accident.

On a highway in New York, a truck rolled over and the New York Post was scattered all over the place.

After hearing the news, a TV reporter who rushed to the scene to report on the scene interviewed the lucky but unlucky driver: How come you have so many expired “New York Post” in your car?

The other party replied angrily: “What’s so strange that I can’t sell it, of course I have to deal with it…”

The “New York Daily News”, which has found its place, continued to sarcastically openly and relentlessly: “The New York Post” is a complete liar. If the newspaper can’t be sold, it will be cheap; it has been deceived by feelings and betrayed. Consumers who trust and waste time should sue.

Seeing the richest man’s blog, no one has ever responded. The New York Daily News has ridiculed Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the New York Post, and said, “Tang’s tax returns are all showing up. Should you also be courteous?”

…

Seeing the guys who smashed their tax returns, they all turned into turtles for a while, and the richest man who had no time to spend on it quickly picked up the next agenda, that is, how to maximize the use and fall into serious losses. Well-known database manufacturer Sybase.

In the current magnificent Internet tide, the most profitable place in a down-to-earth manner is the product solutions on the server side. These include server computer hardware, network operating systems, web server software, databases, middleware, and so on.

Obviously, Zheru Software Company cannot make all the money. Ibm, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems all make a lot of money.

However, there are exceptions. For example, Sybeth, who once challenged Oracle to the point of swearing, was sorry for the good situation in front of him and fell into a serious loss.

There are even more terrible calamities. At the beginning of this year, Sybeth was found out that there was a financial report fraud scandal that falsely reported profits.

Listed public companies are afraid of this situation. Even if Sybases fired the five executives involved with the knife, the big mistake was made and everyone’s heart was lost. The stock price went from the peak of $96, like a roller coaster. Sliding down just as fast.

In fact, Sybase’s own products and technical solutions are still remarkable. Especially in 1994, after purchasing the programming development tool manufacturer powersoft for US$94 million, the product line of powerbuilder was increased and greatly improved.

The main mistake Sybase made was that it was a bit slow to move closer to the Internet.

The powersc Japanese pt programming language used by powerbuilder itself belongs to a niche and lacks scalability. Under the general trend of “browser + middle layer + server” instead of “client + server”, the response is slow, so it meets competitors This opened the gap little by little.

Sybase’s situation is in stark contrast with the incompatible Oracle. Don’t look at Larry Ellison’s joining the “noi color” alliance, and the rivalry with Philosophy Software is in full swing, but in terms of product and technology, Did not commit such a serious strategic error.

Knowing mistakes and correcting them is a good boy.

Sybeth has indeed repented now, and realized that his problem was, whether it might be alleviated, it depends on the cruel external environment of competition, whether he is willing to give him a breathing space generously.

Take the leading position of PeopleSoft Software in the ERP field, it took advantage of the fire and took advantage of Sybeth, which was in a difficult time.

In the process of reporting to the richest man, Cheng Shouzong, CEO of PeopleSoft, emphasized: “At this stage, database vendors are basically on the basis of the original back-end database, and complement the front-end including program development and modeling. The layout of the company, the next step of annexation, is to provide end-user companies such as ERP with specific application solutions like PeopleSoft.”

“Under this general trend, the relationship between database vendors and application software companies has changed from the original complementarity to the current competition. The most obvious example is the insatiable Oracle.”

“PeopleSoft and Zheru Software’s eba color pearls have developed together for so many years. It can be described as smooth on the Fangyuan computer platform, but we must also see that there is still a large market for the unix series platform, and Sybase can just make up for this. Short board.”

The richest man listened patiently, nodding from time to time.

Over the past ten years, Tang Huan has trained many Chinese executives in Silicon Valley. At this stage, the basic and fast-rising Asan groups are evenly matched. Cheng Shouzong from Xiangjiang is a typical representative among them.

Therefore, the richest man still values ​​each other very much.

After listening to Cheng Shouzong’s statement, Tang Huan and Yan Yue objected: “Your thinking cannot be calculated wrong, but you did not consider that PeopleSoft, a company that develops products mainly around business rules, digests Cybernet, which provides technical tools. Thinking, it’s not that easy, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s a burden on your back.”

“When PeopleSoft truly integrates Sybase, the external environment may have undergone earth-shaking changes.”

“For example, the open source community has entered a substantive stage in commercial applications; another example is that the current Internet tide, which has brought a variety of beautiful markets, has begun to fade, and the industry has entered another cycle of depression and prosperity.”

Cheng Shouzong nodded humbly, but his disappointment still could not be concealed on his face. After all, his creativity was shot down by the big boss in a mild manner.

The richest man, who had keenly noticed the change in the other side’s expression, laughed, and said earnestly: “Of course, your vision is very accurate. Through the surface crisis of Sybase, you can see its value.”

“I do have an idea to make better use of Sybase’s value. I need your great help.”

When Cheng Shouzong heard this, he lifted his spirits and quickly said, “I wish to hear the details.”

…

Because of Tang Huan’s sudden birth, compared with the original historical trajectory, many people had to change the rules of survival.

For example, this is the case for Microsoft. Its product line supports many platforms including Fangyuan, Apple, and Unix, which is more “spending” than the original time and space of “speciality”.

This is also normal. Humans are the most advanced creatures that can adapt to the environment. Although Gates is not as wise and martial as the richest man, he is also a talented man. Of course he has his own survival wisdom.

I don’t know how many Gates, who was originally his own beauty, robbed by Tang Huan, this year’s mood can only be described by the ups and downs.

Microsoft’s consumer-grade operating system windows_98 can be described as a masterpiece, and it can be regarded as a rare “perfect” product of Microsoft. Once it was launched, the market responded positively, allowing Gates to see promising opportunities.

Unexpectedly, a Chernobyl virus suddenly popped out, raging everywhere, and sifted windows_98, which has serious flaws in the underlying interrupt management mechanism.

Gates, who wanted to cry without tears, was a man. He promptly cut off the successor to windows_98, the development plan of the windows millennium version, and further broke his wrist, gave up the windows_9x product line, and put Bao completely on the windows_nt product line. , Will be the successor of windows_nt4, windows_nt5. Packaged into windows_2000, fortunately, while entering the high-end market of server/workstation, it also takes into account the home consumer market that the windows_9x product line was originally responsible for.

Fortunately for Gates, it has just been confirmed that the development of windows_2000 is smooth, and it should be launched as scheduled next year.

For this reason, Gates also comforted himself in his heart: taking this opportunity to integrate the scattered operating system product lines is a good thing.

But just after a sigh of relief on the operating system, the database crisis began to appear again.

Steve Ballmer reported a heartbreaking news: PeopleSoft, one of the world’s top enterprise management software vendors, seems to be putting Microsoft’s relational database sql_server into the cold.

In the field of database, Microsoft has also divided into two product lines, one is desktop and the other is enterprise.

The former includes foxba, a copycat of the dba color of the microcomputer database that used to be on the ibm_pc compatible platform, but it does not natively support the relational database model that has become mainstream, so Microsoft has built a desktop-level relational database management system and integrated it To their own office software suite office.

However, database products that can really bring in money are all facing the enterprise-level market.

Microsoft has long been eager for philosophical software, ibm, and Oracle to make a fortune, so it has no foundation in this regard, and has taken a roundabout road, namely, joint development of relational enterprise-level database sql_rver with Sybase .

It’s a pity that the two parties who are proud and arrogant are not good things. In the end, they parted ways due to the distribution of benefits and other reasons. Microsoft has since developed its own version of sql_colorrver, which is ms_sql_rver.

However, it is precisely because of this origin that ms_sql_colorrver and Sybase’s sql_colorrver cannot be completely separated, and there are still many things in common. For example, the relational database structured query language used by both parties is t-sql.

The ms_sql_color rver, which has been diligently developed by Microsoft to the sixth edition, is not on the desktop at all in the face of the eba color of philosopher software, the db2 of ibm, and the oracle of Oracle.

In this regard, Gates, who is experienced in catching up with his peers, formulated the business strategy for ms_sql_server: to make contact with independent software providers of enterprise application solutions like PeopleSoft, and persuade them to use their own ms_sql at a price that is almost free. _rver.

PeopleSoft is also happy to accept it, because there are many small, medium and micro enterprises, which are price-sensitive and not so demanding. ms_sql_rver is really enough.

As a result, Server has grown step by step under this imposing strategy developed by Gates.

But I never imagined that PeopleSoft suddenly wanted to abandon ms_sql_server.

Gates settled, and asked in a deep voice, “Do you know the reason?”

Steve Ballmer replied helplessly: “PeopleSoft is preparing to acquire Sybase, so it wants to win the trust of the other party by taking down ms_sql_rver.”

Gates slapped the table in annoyance and opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to spit.

When these two people were staring at them, their subordinates came to report: Tang is visiting!

The relationship between Gates and the richest man is very delicate. It is said that it is a trouble, and to walk around from time to time, it can be said that love and hate are entangled, and grievances are hard to express.

In any case, Gates still has to get up to greet him.

Tang Huan seemed to be grinning and said, “I came to Seattle this time to visit Amazon.com, but suddenly remembered that I hadn’t come to Microsoft for a while, so I left it alone.”

Gates laughed and said, “Welcome to Tang.”

After the richest man sat down, he asked heartily: “How did I hear that after the trouble with windows_98, Microsoft’s relational database ms_sql_server was also left out by PeopleSoft?”

“Tang’s news is really well-informed.” Gates said embarrassingly: “I don’t know, can you help and influence PeopleSoft?”

“I still have some understanding of PeopleSoft’s ideas.” Tang Huan suggested leisurely: “According to me, Microsoft might as well acquire Sybase, so it will be a hundred dollars.”

After Gates and Steve Ballmer looked at each other, they fell silent.