How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 272 President Wang is so kind! (Two chapters combined)

The sect's patriarch may not be the most powerful, but he or she certainly has the greatest influence.

Although Wang Zidong, the founder of Sina, parted ways with the company amicably back then, he still left behind many intriguing rumors in the industry.

Especially within the old wave.

On the surface, Wang Zidong's departure had almost nothing to do with Cao Ge. It was simply the result of an internal power struggle between the founder and the board of directors, since Cao Ge was the CFO of Sina, responsible for the company's listing system and IPO financing.

Cao Ge, as one of the few financial talents in China familiar with US stock listings, had a lot of say when he led the construction of the VIE structure for Sina's listing. The main reason why Wang Zidong was dismissed was his weakness in the equity structure.

After Wang Zidong left Sina, Cao Ge did not take on the role of CEO. Instead, as COO, he began to use capital tools to expand the business through acquisitions to find new profit growth points for Sina. He made great contributions in forcing Shanda to withdraw its takeover bid in 05. In 06, he became CEO after his performance strategy was validated. In 09, he used MBO (management buyout) to complete the actual control and became the sole executive director of Sina.

But whether it was Wang Zidong's departure, Shanda's acquisition in 05, or the MBO in 09, the essence of all these were achieved by the company's structure and rules, and some of these rules and structures were laid out by Cao Ge.

Theoretically speaking, Wang Zidong and Cao Ge had no personal grudges; in fact, they had even been comrades-in-arms for a period of time. However, after carefully studying Cao Ge's process of controlling Jiulang, there are still many intriguing aspects.

In his early years, Wang Zidong always thought that his opponent was the early investors led by Duan Yong, but in recent years he has come to realize that it seems that someone else has ultimately taken over.

Currently, the top three shareholders of Old Wave are three overseas investment funds: Price, Fidelity, and Ziyan, which together hold more than 22% of the shares. Most of the early investors have also withdrawn.

Structurally speaking, the old wave is now a Ship of Theseus.

However, for Sina, the halo of being the founder is indelible, both in terms of its influence on long-term employees and on external public opinion.

The founder, who had disappeared from the public eye for nearly ten years, has reappeared, but as the CEO of another social media platform, which is in direct competition with Weibo, which is currently being developed by Sina.

Good news! The sect's patriarch has emerged from seclusion.

Bad news: the old master has come out of seclusion with enemies to seize the mountain stronghold.

The news of Wang Zidong's return as CEO of the MS platform naturally and quickly topped the trending lists on major social media forums.

Even within Sina, this unexpected event was completely unexpected. Although Wang Zidong signed a non-compete agreement when he left, it stipulated that he would not start any portal-related internet businesses within ten years. However, MS is an instant social media platform.

Cao Ge was in a real bind. He had just made a pledge to the board of directors to persuade the two major shareholders, Pulais and Fuda, to form an alliance with Qiandu to restrain Ms., but unexpectedly, Ms. played the card of Wang Zidong.

Although everyone feels that Wang Zidong is not a threat in terms of business management, the influence of public opinion and symbolism is undeniable. If Sina loses in the Weibo social media field, it may even affect the development of the entire company.

Moreover, the deletion of accounts belonging to artists from the Tianhuo Group, such as Fan Bingbing and Qu Shou, was quickly discovered by fans. Sina Weibo had no choice but to suppress the related topics and urgently convene a meeting to discuss countermeasures.

As the main initiator of this alliance, Li Yanhong naturally had to attend the meeting.

Although Baidu and Sina do not hold shares in each other, because both Pleasant and Fuda funds are major shareholders of Baidu and Sina, Sina uses Baidu's search technology for all its searches, and Sina's portal and Baidu Search have a deep partnership in advertising.

The idea of ​​targeting the traffic of the entire streaming media platform was first proposed by Li Yanhong, because he had already completed the platform development that was comparable to Mulan Street at the beginning of the month.

Baidu acquired Meilishu, a platform established last year. Meilishu was originally a social media platform for sharing fashion trends among women. Later, it learned from Mulan Street to monetize through e-commerce and product seeding. It has grown to millions of users and monthly commissions of tens of thousands of yuan. However, due to the lack of a large amount of high-quality content and influencer resources, its development has not been very fast.

After acquiring and investing in Meilishu, Baidu not only used its technology to directly copy the content from Mulan Street to Meilishu, achieving 'zero-cost' content filling, but also used keyword search to prioritize traffic to Meilishu. Furthermore, it leveraged the entertainment attributes of iQiyi to emulate Tianhuo by signing a large number of models and incubating them into platform influencers.

However, Li Yanhong underestimated the speed of Tianhuo's development. Not only did it have resources from top celebrities in the entertainment industry, but it was also far ahead in the mid-tier model/internet celebrity field. He had someone investigate and found that there were already more than 6,000 registered and certified influencers on Mulan Street. If Meilishu wanted to catch up, it would have to pay an extremely high price.

To help Meilishu develop, Qiandu also invested in Xia Ce Entertainment, which will be listed next month, hoping to leverage Xia Ce's artist resources to support the platform.

That's why Li Yanhong thought of taking advantage of this social media battle between Sina Weibo and Mulan Street to cut off the traffic distribution between Tianhuo and Mulan Street, and to buy time for Meilishu's development by gradually reducing the exposure of Tianhuo influencers.

Baidu has not completely given up on the e-commerce market. Its "Youa" e-commerce platform is still operating, and it is negotiating with Rakuten Japan to cooperate on the cross-border platform "Rakuten".

Li Yanhong wanted to see if he could revitalize the e-commerce sector by using the model of "e-commerce seeding social media + Baidu search + e-commerce platform".

Seeing Cao Ge's worried expression at the meeting, Li Yanhong smiled and said, "President Cao, there's no need to worry so much. President Wang joining MS probably won't have that much of an impact on Sina. Weibo is just a small part of Sina. As long as we still control the upstream traffic, that's fine."

Cao Ge forced a smile upon hearing this. Sina's portal business development had already encountered a bottleneck. Above it was Tencent, an insurmountable mountain, and below it was NetEase, which was relentlessly pursuing it. Moreover, the portal industry had already entered a phase of competition in a saturated market.

The reason we've focused all our resources on Weibo this year is to package it as a new growth driver to stabilize the stock price and drive development.

“President Li has a large and powerful family business. Even if one business unit fails, there are other alternatives. But we at Old Wave can’t afford to go through that.” Cao Ge sighed.

"Is President Cao planning to abandon the alliance?" Li Yanhong's eyes turned cold.

"That's not quite it, but I still want to figure out what the connection is between Tianhuo and Ms., and why Tianhuo's attitude is so aggressive this time," Cao Ge said worriedly.

The development of Sina Weibo this year is inseparable from Tianhuo. It can be said that more than 70% of the major hot topics on Weibo are provided by the Tianhuo system. Cao Ge has a background in finance. Although he believes he has some talent in strategy, it does not mean that he dares to underestimate an operations-oriented CEO like Wang Yao.

Since Wang Yao was able to successfully manage the public relations of several thorny negative incidents involving Qu Shou, Cheng Long, and Fan Bingbing, he could also potentially stir up the feud between Wang Zidong and Jiulang.

Cao Ge was not afraid of offending Ms., but he was unwilling to offend Wang Yao.

Who knows what other tricks this young man might pull?

“Tianhuo’s overseas investments are all in cooperation with Fox, and his investments in Japan are also mostly related to Ms. , do we still need to guess about his relationship with Ms. ,” Li Yanhong looked at Cao Ge with doubt.

Can't you see how obviously they're flirting?
It's obvious that Deng Wendi is having an affair with that kid Wang Yao.

“If it’s just about business cooperation, Old Wave is also an option,” Cao Ge said, frowning.

“President Cao has a serious gambler’s mentality. What’s needed at this time is decisiveness, not hesitation.” Li Yanhong frowned.

"The Tianhuo Group has affected many entertainment companies, which may have a significant impact on the old Sina Entertainment portal section," Cao Ge sighed.

"Qiandu will also be affected, Mr. Cao. Don't worry, I won't let you fight alone. I also have irreconcilable conflicts with Tianhuo in social e-commerce. As long as Jiulang remains confident, we will fully support you." Li Yanhong smiled slightly.

Upon hearing this, Cao Ge and the other directors raised their eyebrows simultaneously, feeling much more relieved.

With the full support of Baidu, the situation is indeed quite different.

"Baidu's search technology has made significant breakthroughs recently. It can guarantee that for the foreseeable future, if users search for news related to the Tianhuo Group ten times, six times they will be redirected to other content. In addition, with some adjustments to the ranking of negative news, I don't believe that netizens will still have such a high level of approval for them." Li Yanhong sneered.

Cao Ge's heart skipped a beat; Li Yanhong was truly preparing to strike a fatal blow against the Heavenly Fire System.

I never imagined that the boast I made to Pang Bin would actually come true.

"I will also help mediate with Tencent. They also invested in an online ticketing company this year, which will directly compete with Tianhuo's Kanpian.com. We can also share the e-commerce traffic from the combination of Sina Weibo and Meilishu. Moreover, they also plan to get involved in the cultural and entertainment sector in the future, and they will not let Tianhuo grow too big." Li Yanhong threw out another piece of good news.

Cao Ge and the others were invigorated. With the support of two giants, Baidu and Tencent, crushing Tianhuo would be as easy as crushing an ant.

"Moreover, the most important thing is that Alibaba is currently preoccupied with its own problems. Even if it wanted to take this opportunity to win over Tianhuo, it wouldn't have the energy. After all, JD.com and Dangdang have seen their revenues grow rapidly in the past few months, while Alibaba is embroiled in negative issues. The e-commerce landscape may undergo new changes."

"Speaking of which, Alibaba and Tianhuo don't get along very well. After all, Mulan Street chose to cooperate with JD.com. Considering this, it's no exaggeration to say that Tianhuo is surrounded by enemies." Li Yanhong continued to try to reassure them.

"Wang Yao, this young man, is quite the troublemaker." Cao Ge was speechless, never expecting that Tianhuo had unknowingly expanded into so many fields.

“Young people are prone to getting carried away when they achieve success, but he does have a lot of ideas. However, if he tries to eat everything, he will only end up stuffing himself to death.” Li Yanhong smiled.

Wang Yao's strategy of using Heavenly Fire in his left hand and Starfire in his right has almost completely come to light. Li Yanhong and the others can naturally see at a glance that this young man wants to create a similar interactive entertainment cycle model to the one proposed by Shanda back then.

However, he was not optimistic. After all, even Chen Tianjiao failed to succeed back then. Tianhuo's development seems vigorous now, but its foundation is unstable. Blindly betting and making moves will only exhaust itself.

Most importantly, above them are the three giants, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), who control the most important core resources of the internet: traffic, channels, and capital.

No matter how much Wang Yao does now, it will all be in vain, and in the end, he will only benefit them. Therefore, Li Yanhong looks down on Wang Yao while learning from his mature system and model.

If he doesn't take it, the penguin will.

Cao Ge breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this and was about to express his stance when he suddenly received an important message from Pang Bin.

"Um, Mr. Li, Sogou, a subsidiary of Sogou, just released an announcement. Would you like to take a look?" Cao Ge asked.

"Huh?" Li Yanhong was taken aback. After taking the computer and seeing the content on the screen, the smile on his face gradually disappeared.

‘嗖狗公司正式独立拆分，接受牙虎集团1000万美刀（10%）、Ms华夏/嗖狗互持5%、星火科技1000万美刀（10%）融资，张超阳+嗖狐持股75%，嗖狗将在搜索、浏览器板块扩大技术投入。’

Baidu's current market capitalization of nearly $400 billion is mainly due to its monopolistic position, which holds more than 75% of the search market share. This results in a staggering 50% net profit in the search advertising industry, which is why it has achieved a terrifying PE ratio of 60 times with an annual net profit of $6-7 million.

Baidu has dominated the search field for many years, defeating countless competitors, and almost no one dares to openly challenge it.

Sohu's Sogou once attempted to challenge Baidu's dominance with its third-generation engine, but ultimately failed. After Google withdrew from the search market, Sogou barely survived with a market share of around 3%.

However, Sogou's later-launched input method, which incorporated cloud computing technology, gained 80% of the input method market share, giving Sogou Search a much-needed boost. This year, it launched a browser, seemingly preparing to leverage its input method and Sogou portal advantages to compete with IE and 360.

In less than six months after its release, Sogou captured 6% of the market, attracting the attention of 360. Before the 3Q war, 360 made an offer to acquire Sogou. At that time, although Sogou's business seemed to be doing well, it lost tens of millions of US dollars in just six months because it had no revenue streams. Further research and development would require a lot of funds, and the future of the competition in the search and browser fields was uncertain.

In order to save Sogou, Zhang Chaoyang had no choice but to seek investment from the outside world. Alibaba was originally prepared to invest. Before the counterfeit goods scandal, Alibaba had too much money and was looking for projects everywhere. Search and browser can both serve e-commerce. In addition, Alibaba wanted to deeply integrate with Sogou's cultural and entertainment industry, so it was prepared to invest.

Unexpectedly, the counterfeit goods scandal and the payment transfer scandal erupted, leaving them preoccupied with their own problems. As a result, the two investments were put on hold. Li Yanhong originally thought that Zhang Chaoyang had already sold the Sogou business to 360.

With the outbreak of the 3Q War, he never expected that Sogou could emerge in this way.

And most importantly, Yahu is among the investors!

Even a weakened camel is bigger than a horse; Yahoo is still a global search giant. Although its search business has been outsourced to Microsoft, it doesn't mean it has no other plans.

Moreover, YaHu has been out of the Chinese market for so many years, yet it is making a comeback this time.

What signal is this?
Cao Ge and the others dared not utter a sound, watching Li Yanhong's ever-changing expression, which had long since lost the relaxed and indifferent demeanor he had just displayed when he was commanding the country and pointing out the flaws in the world.

Laugh.

Mr. Li, you should be laughing.

We're getting anxious when you don't smile!

"What is the connection between Tooth Tiger and Ms?" Li Yanhong took a deep breath and asked in a deep voice.

"Never heard of it, let me check it out." Cao Ge was taken aback and sent a message to the overseas consulting department to investigate.

Ms. has a media group background, so how did she end up with Ya Hu, this aging tiger?

YaHu, SooHu, SooGou, and Ms represent the search, portal, browser, and social media fields, respectively, which is enough to achieve traffic circulation. In addition, Xinghuo Technology clearly points to the entertainment e-commerce resources controlled by Wang Yao.

In this way, it seems like they can have fun on their own.

Li Yanhong is not afraid of them playing around in the domestic market, but he is afraid that they will develop in the overseas market and use overseas funds and technological resources to continuously support the domestic market and compete with him in a war of attrition.

Baidu has actually encountered a development bottleneck. The search engine, its cash cow, has reached its limit. Li Yanhong has been planning and laying out the next step of development for the past year. Kiwi, e-commerce, and social media are just small tests this time.

He just poached the head of wireless business from Sohu, preparing to benchmark against Sogou's input method, browser, map and other businesses to develop mobile wireless platforms, and is also thinking about learning from Google to delve into industries such as AI and cloud computing.

However, these are all very expensive initiatives, and they all depend on the premise that the cash flow of the search business is not affected. If Sogou gets help from Yahu and starts to engage in malicious competition, although it may not be crippling, it will certainly be troublesome.

"I've heard some rumors. About two weeks ago, Ms Group announced that it was in talks to accept investment from YaHu Group. Since Ms has over 100 million global users and is capable of competing with Facebook and Twitter, YaHu wants to expand its business scope through search engine + social media," Cao Ge said in a somewhat somber voice. So, Ms not only has a media group as its parent company, but also YaHu as its parent company?

If they support the media group, it doesn't matter, since their main advertising business is in Europe and America. But if Yahoo, their "mother," comes, it will first affect the stance of another giant, Alibaba.

Alibaba's e-commerce search advertising alone may reach 10 billion RMB annually. If all of that were allocated to Sogou Search, it would likely be enough to support its development, not to mention the broader traffic growth from social media platforms like MS.

Although Li Yanhong had absolute confidence in the search business, he was not blindly optimistic. The combination of Sohu, Yahu, and the media group did make him feel a little pressure.

“President Cao, the current situation is clear. The other side is not only targeting Jiulang, but has also declared war on me.” Li Yanhong turned his head and smiled.

“That’s right, Mr. Li, it seems we really have to fight side by side.” Cao Ge gave a bitter smile.

Damn it! If I had known Ms. had such a powerful background, I should have been more lenient with her back then!
It was expected that Sina and MS would go to war, just like the current heated 3Q war. The pie is only so big, and the brave will win when they meet on a narrow path.

But Sohu's sudden challenge to Baidu's search engine business, and its partnership with Yahoo, which had already withdrawn from the Chinese market, was something no one expected.

Baidu's influence on internet search is already deeply entrenched. Everyone is not optimistic about Sohu's rash behavior this time, but they are also secretly curious about Sohu's confidence.

Even Zhang Chaoyang was curious about where Wang Yao got the confidence to go head-to-head with Qiandu.

But faced with a real investment to fill the hole in Sogou, he naturally wouldn't refuse, since he wasn't worried about offending Baidu anyway, as the two companies were competitors.

"Brother, I didn't expect you and Ya Hu to be so close. How many more surprises do you have in store?" Zhang Chaoyang asked with a broad smile.

"It's not about my connections, it's about the media group's reputation." Wang Yao smiled.

"Yahu values ​​Ms's competitiveness in the social media field. Although Huaxia is a subsidiary, it has the greatest development and potential, so it's natural to protect it. As for why we invested in Sogou, it was indeed my suggestion, and I didn't expect Bartz to take it to heart."

"How did you convince her? Don't tell me it was because you made a movie for her." Zhang Chaoyang was very curious.

“She also wants to vote in MLS.” Wang Yao smiled slightly.

Zhang Chaoyang raised an eyebrow slightly. That makes sense. The business model of Mulan Street in China has been proven, and the overseas version will definitely have a market as well. However, only heaven knows how large it can develop.

“However, Ms. Huaxia actually has a major shareholder who owns 40% of the shares. Do you know who it is?” Zhang Chaoyang lowered his voice.

Because of the need for cross-shareholding with Ms Huaxia, Zhang Chaoyang saw the shareholder information. One of the major shareholders, named [Weigu], held only 5% less shares than Ms Group. Combined with the rapid rise of Ms in China, Zhang Chaoyang keenly realized that this shareholder definitely played a key role.

Someone who can develop social media to this level is definitely a talent.

"I don't know, Sister Wendi didn't tell me either," Wang Yao said with a smile and shook his head.

“As long as Ms can develop well, it will be beneficial to us in every way. Tell me your plan?” Zhang Chaoyang said seriously.

This time, Wang Yao's Xinghuo also invested, and also invested 10%, making it the largest shareholder of Sogou. They were thinking of poaching Wang Yao to be the CEO, but unexpectedly he became the largest shareholder directly.

“You can continue with your other businesses as usual. Xinghuo is mainly responsible for the development of mobile browsers. In the mobile era, the value of browsers even far exceeds that of portal websites. I have a prototype mobile browser. If Sogou doesn’t mind, they can buy it directly. With some adjustments, it can be launched in half a month,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Good heavens, you've come here to boost your turnover? How much?" Zhang Chaoyang chuckled.

“One million dollars.” Wang Yao held up his finger.

"Do you think I'm a sucker?" Zhang Chaoyang rolled his eyes.

“Time is money. I’ve spent over 70 yuan on this browser.” Wang Yao frowned.

"50, that's the most." Zhang Chaoyang was too lazy to listen to his nonsense.

Even for development on both iOS and Android platforms, 50 is enough.

"Alright, there's no special strategy. We'll just transfer all of Tianhuo's search ads to Sogou and nurture them slowly. I reckon Baidu will soon start using keyword blocking to disrupt Tianhuo's related information," Wang Yao said.

This browser app was acquired as part of a deal in India, essentially a free gift. You can take advantage of it if you can. Browsers need search technology, and this is just a transitional tool, so there's no need to waste too much effort on it. It's perfect to leave it to Sogou.

"Passively taking a beating?" Zhang Chaoyang was taken aback.

He had initially been somewhat intrigued by Wang Yao's actions, thinking that Wang Yao was preparing to launch a counterattack.

"It's not entirely passive, but Sogou is a generation behind Baidu in terms of technology, and it's impossible to catch up in the short term. However, Baidu uses a crawler algorithm, which mainly relies on users to actively search, and the content is all second-hand content that is crawled."

I suggest that Sogou Search adopt a dual-track approach of 'original content within the site + integrated external content', using a pseudo-recommendation hot list format to place popular original content on the list. Over time, this can accumulate a user base that has different preferences for information.

"I launched a 'Top 100 Creators' event on Bilibili, where users create their own posts and are paid advertising fees based on exposure. This way, we can get a lot of original content, creators can earn money, users can see fresh original content, and the platform can gain traffic and user retention." Wang Yao suggested a model similar to that of Toutiao in the future.

"It sounds like it's just combining search and forums? It doesn't seem to have much of an advantage," Zhang Chaoyang frowned.

"Pretty much the same. The only difference is that it can stimulate more people's creative desires, and these creators can accumulate fans and spread their influence through viral growth." Wang Yao shook his head.

He wanted to keep the Toutiao recommendation algorithm model in his own hands, so he could only ask Zhang Chaoyang to help cultivate a group of self-media authors first.

"You mean a roundabout way to acquire customers? I think I understand, but I estimate the results will be minimal." Zhang Chaoyang nodded.

"It's a war of attrition. It's impossible for them to surpass 1,000 search results directly unless a fundamental, major event occurs. We can only lay out our mobile strategy in advance and wait for the smartphone penetration rate to explode so we can overtake them." Wang Yao shrugged.

"That's it?" Zhang Chaoyang said with a sneer.

“The giants are unshakeable; we can only wear them down slowly. But if you’re interested, I’m going to Paris at the end of the month. Keep an eye out for the premiere of Superman,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

Although Sohu only bought the broadcasting rights for "Superman", it was actually the biggest beneficiary, because "Sister Hua" alone brought Sohu Video tens of millions of new users, making Sohu Video's daily active users and market share surpass Tudou to become the second largest in the industry.

Although he didn't receive any advertising revenue sharing, the stock price rose by 5%, so it's understandable that the platform owner should be concerned about "Superman".

"Don't worry, but I suggest you be careful abroad. Don't mess with women you shouldn't. There are scammers who specifically target Chinese people," Zhang Chaoyang said, winking.

"Don't worry, I'm very careful." Wang Yao chuckled and, after seeing Zhang Chaoyang off, called Gong Yu of Kiwi Fruit directly.

The call was answered after two attempts.

"Mr. Wang, I'm sorry, I just finished a meeting." Gong Yu's voice was a little nervous.

"Excuse me, Mr. Gong, kiwifruit is doing quite well lately," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Thanks to Mr. Wang's copyright, it's still very attractive to the audience. It's just a bit of a pity that we didn't cooperate on the online variety show. I was going to ask you if you have any other plans for online variety shows in the future," Gong Yu said with an awkward smile.

"Of course there are, but Sohu and Le's have already ordered several copies. If Kiwi wants to order a custom order, there might be a waiting list, as production capacity is limited." Wang Yao smiled.

"I understand, I understand. Did Mr. Wang need something from me?" Gong Yu asked.

"I've noticed that the conversion rate and viewership of those recent online variety shows like 'Campus Belle' aren't very high. iQiyi's self-produced online drama section has launched quite a few new programs. The exposure from the first episode's 50 million contract is almost there. I'd like to ask President Gong whether we should renew the contract or terminate the cooperation," Wang Yao frankly stated.

"Oh, I was just about to look for you anyway." Gong Yu laughed. "Kiwifruit has indeed put some effort into its self-produced web dramas lately, but 'Campus Belle' and similar shows are still the mainstays, consistently getting millions of views every day."
However, by the second half of the year, advertisers had largely exhausted their budgets, which explains the apparent decline in data – a normal phenomenon.

Gong Yu laid the groundwork for a moment before continuing, "Therefore, the subsequent contracts may need to be adjusted in terms of budget or data ratios."

"How should we adjust it?" Wang Yao squinted.

“The unit price will be reduced by 30%.” Gong Yu hesitated for a moment.

The original price was 1 per minute, but it has now been changed to 7000 per minute.

Objectively speaking, the fans and influence that these programs have accumulated in the early stages are already stable enough to cover these costs, so even if prices are reduced, profits will not be greatly affected.

However, it is clear that the reason for this price reduction is not because advertisers lack budgets. On the contrary, the e-commerce industry is growing exceptionally fast in the second half of the year, and advertising for programs like "Campus Belle" that are specifically tailored for C-end e-commerce will only increase and become more expensive.

"The price has dropped too much, so let's not cooperate then," Wang Yao chuckled.

"President Wang, don't worry, everything can be discussed." Gong Yu clearly hadn't expected Wang Yao's reaction to be so resolute.

There's no such thing as doing business without haggling!

“My idea is to raise it by 30%,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

Gong Yu was speechless, but he still paid back the money, though the price was not ideal.

"Look, you can't accept a price increase, and I can't accept a price decrease, so what's there to discuss?" Wang Yao laughed.

Gong Yu fell silent again.

“Actually, we both know that it’s not about the price. Mr. Gong should still remember why we cooperated before, right?” Wang Yao spoke again, his tone gentle.

Gong Yu's face inexplicably felt a burning pain.

“Back then, both President Gong and I were optimistic about the ‘content + e-commerce monetization’ model. Now that the path has matured, we feel like strangers to each other,” Wang Yao said casually.

"Mr. Wang, please don't say that." Gong Yu's voice was a little hoarse.

"However, I don't blame President Gong. You have your own difficulties. After all, the company belongs to Qiandu, not you. You can't control many decisions. Let's end the collaboration on the web series here. As for the copyright cooperation, we'll just let it go when the contract expires."

"I wish President Gong and Kiwi a bright future and continued success. However, from this day forward, our paths will diverge, one going towards Hunan and the other towards Qin." Wang Yao's tone was melancholic, tinged with regret and sorrow.

Gong Yu's lips twitched, feeling a strange pang of conscience. He was filled with a desire to defend himself, but instead fell silent.

"But as I said before, I have high hopes for President Gong's talent. If you're ever unhappy at Kiwifruit, feel free to talk to me. Goodbye." Wang Yao left with those last words and hung up the phone.

Hearing the busy tone coming from the phone, Gong Yu remained silent.

The main reason why Kiwifruit has been able to develop to its current scale is its cooperation with Wang Yao. Without such a rich copyright library, its user base might not even reach half of what it is today, not to mention the "e-commerce soft placement" model.

In the past two months, he has generated millions of yuan in revenue for the platform, attracted a large number of e-commerce customers, and laid the core foundation for the platform's business model. Moreover, the cooperation between the two parties has been very smooth. It can even be said that Wang Yao is the most compatible partner that Gong Yu has ever worked with.

Now, because of Baidu's suppression of Mulan Street, the cooperation has been forced to stop, which makes him feel guilty for discarding the useful tool after it has served its purpose.

The main reason is that Baidu submitted an article to Meilishu, which not only rivaled Mulan Street, but also directly copied and pasted content, which is indeed unethical.

He knew that Wang Yao was fully aware of all of this.

I originally thought they were calling to interrogate me, but it turned out to be a peaceful negotiation.

Honestly, if it were me, and my core business was copied, and they even resorted to blocking my channels, I would have exploded. I would be considered well-mannered if I didn't give them a good scolding, let alone engage in friendly negotiations.

More importantly, Wang Yao did not withdraw the copyright cooperation and acted in accordance with the contract, which made Gong Yu feel somewhat ashamed.

If Wang Yao were to withdraw the copyright library, the daily active users and user churn of iQiyi would be alarming. Moreover, since Le's went public, the market price of copyrights has increased several times over. To acquire copyrights of the same scale, it would cost at least two or three times as much.

Gong Yu sighed deeply.

Mr. Wang is so kind and benevolent.

(End of this chapter)