dognovel Chapter 16 Recruiting Soldiers
Chapter 16 Recruiting Soldiers
In late July, Dolly Pictures, the company behind the Iron Man franchise, snagged the film and television rights to Universal Pictures' Iron Man franchise.
Ernst thought it was just a small surprise, but Universal Pictures threw out a huge package, even selling the film and television rights to the Hulk and Namor together.
This move is even more extravagant than a supermarket sale. Frank, on the other hand, has mastered the art of price gouging to a whole new level.
Using 20th Century Fox as a bargaining chip, Ernst's initial offer of $1.3 million forced him to raise the price to $1.5 million.
After hesitating for three days, 20th Century Fox finally decided to give up the competition for the film and television rights to Iron Man.
After all, in America at that time, Iron Man was like an unsold, near-expiry product in a supermarket; not many people would even give him a second glance.
Ernst had been ripped off, and when he went to sign with Universal Pictures, his face was as long as Mount Changbai, completely looking like he had been cheated. Even he himself admired his acting skills.
"Ernst, you made a great deal. Acquiring Iron Man for $150 million is definitely the wisest decision you've made since taking over MGM."
Frank's smug look practically screamed "smugness" on his face.
"If this were the Hulk, $150 million would be no problem, even $600 million would be fine, but this is Iron Man, the Iron Man nobody cares about."
He had only made a grumbling remark, but what Frank said next gave Ernst a jolt.
"Are you really willing to spend $600 million to buy the film and television rights to the Hulk? And that's just the film and television rights."
After a moment's hesitation, Ernst nodded. "Of course, I've loved superheroes since I was a kid. If it can be made into a movie, why not?"
The $370 million was the price Universal paid for the rights to Iron Man, Hulk, and Namor. Six years later, Frank sold it for $870 million.
In retrospect, Ernst knows he'll once again become that fool in Hollywood who's rich but foolish.
But he didn't care. He didn't know that ten years from now, or even less, Universal Pictures would be crying in the bathroom with all its executives standing together cursing Frank.
Having settled the copyright issue, Ernst immediately headed to Stanford, taking his first step into internet entrepreneurship.
After completing negotiations with Universal, Ernst also set off for Stanford to begin his internet entrepreneurship journey.
If we're talking about who's the world's largest tech company, Google calls itself number two, and no one would dare claim to be number one.
With control over five billion users worldwide, Android dominating over 70% of mobile operating systems, and YouTube controlling 80% of internet traffic, this Silicon Valley giant has turned the world into its giant laboratory.
Even with the arrival of the AI wave, many people say that Google has fallen behind, but it is the world's first and only company with a net profit of over 100 billion US dollars, making it a true king of financial power.
After much deliberation, Ernst, an internet company, decided to copy Google's model.
For no other reason than that in this day and age, Google is more likely to succeed and can succeed faster.
On the Stanford University campus, Sergey Brin found Larry Page reading a book next to Stanford's iconic clock tower.
The place was packed with people, many students engaged in lively discussions about the problems they encountered in their academic research and the inspirations that sparked their minds. They were all highly talented and creative young people with unique and profound insights into technological developments in various fields.
"Hey Larry, do you know what kind of speech I just heard? The speaker's understanding of the internet felt like it opened the door to a whole new world for me."
Larry Page closed his book and looked at his excited friend. "What happened?"
Sergei Brin couldn't contain his excitement: "When I passed by the auditorium just now, I saw an internet company recruiting. Their recruitment method was very novel; it was a lecture-style event. The company founder was on stage talking about the purpose of founding the company, its development, and his vision for the future. He also welcomed interested people to ask questions, just like an academic discussion."
"I was curious, so I went in to listen. I can only say that his views on the Internet industry were really ahead of their time. I could tell that he didn't understand Internet programming at all, and he lacked a lot of Internet knowledge, but his thinking and ideas were something I had never seen before, and he had such a clear understanding of the future development of the Internet."
"What company is it?" Larry Page's curiosity was piqued. He knew his friend very well; he was an absolute internet genius, yet even he was impressed by him, which aroused his interest.
"Google, a newly established internet company."
"Google?" Larry Page paused for a moment. "What kind of word is that? Is it googol? 10 to the power of 100?"
Sergey Page shook his head. "That's right, it's Google. They said the internet is a new thing, and choosing the name Google not only creates a new word for the internet, but also hopes that this word, like the company's future, will be remembered by people all over the world."
"Google? It's cool that it's remembered all over the world."
Larry Page found it increasingly interesting and said, "Tell me the details."
Sergei Brin immediately began to describe it vividly, as if he had returned to that passionate auditorium.
The young man on stage was dressed casually, a stark contrast to the traditional businessmen in suits and ties. His voice was melodious and powerful, captivating the audience.
A young man, dressed neatly and unlike the businessmen in their suits, stood on the stage with a distinctive and powerful voice, each word resonating deeply and captivating the audience.
"Everyone says the internet is starting to take off, but in my opinion, the internet right now is a mess. There's no list or hierarchy of information. When you try to search for something, the results are likely to be pictures of babies."
"Then Yahoo appeared, and I think you're all familiar with this website. They used manual screening to select high-quality websites, then categorized them, and finally integrated them into a single webpage."
"But in my opinion, this doesn't solve the problem at all. For example, if you want to search for oranges, although you won't see a picture of a child anymore, you might see a picture of a grapefruit. Because they look similar, the algorithm will determine that they are the same content."
"Then why can't we develop a more accurate search engine? Instead of manually adding results like Yahoo, let's use pure algorithms and let computers beat computers."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but when you search for information on the Internet, some high-quality websites always appear frequently in the links, just like good papers are frequently cited."
"So, can we assume that if a high-quality website A uses website B, does that mean website B's quality won't be too bad? It's like saying Einstein cited your paper; does that mean your paper must be good too?"
The analogy made the students in the audience laugh, including Sergei Brin.
"Does this mean we can use algorithms to evaluate the importance of web pages? In the future, when searching for oranges, links with longer access times will be ranked at the top, while those with fewer visits will be pushed to the back, all of them relegated to the back as punishment."
"A brilliant idea!" Larry Page's eyes lit up. After listening to Sergei Brin's enthusiastic description, he felt a surge of admiration.
The two then exchanged a glance and said in unison, "You're also interested in this company?"