Aug 10th 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
洛杉矶，2006年8月10日，《經濟學人》印刷版
What today's internet firms can learn from 19th-century history
今天的網際網路公司可以從19世紀的曆史中得到什麼啟示？
PRINCE KLEMENS VON METTERNICH, foreign minister of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, would have no trouble recognising Google. To him, the world's most popular web-search engine would closely resemble the Napoleonic France that in his youth humiliated Austria and Europe's other powers. Its rivals—Yahoo!, the largest of the traditional web gateways, eBay, the biggest online auction and trading site, and Microsoft, a software empire that owns MSN, a struggling web portal—would look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Metternich responded by forging an alliance among those three monarchies to create a “balance of power” against France. Google's enemies, he might say, ought now to do the same thing.
梅特涅，拿破侖時代奧地利帝國的外交部長，會毫無疑問地這樣看待Google.對他來說，這個世界上最流行的Web搜尋引擎與拿破侖法蘭西帝國類似，而正是這個帝國使他所在的年輕的奧地利以及歐洲其他列強受辱。Google的對手――Yahoo!，世界上最大的傳統門戶網站；eBay,最大的線上拍賣和交易網站，以及MicroSoft,擁有MSN（一個不斷努力前進的門戶網站）的軟體帝國――就好比是俄國，普魯士和奧地利。梅特涅當年就是通過在三個帝國間建立一個聯盟來與法蘭西帝國對抗，進而形成彼此間“力量的均衡”的。他也許會說， Google的敵人現在也應該這樣做。
Google announced two new conquests on August 7th. It struck a deal with Viacom, an “old” media firm, under which it will syndicate video clips from Viacom brands such as MTV and Nickelodeon to other websites, and integrate advertisements into them. This makes Google the clear leader in the fledgling but promising market for web-video advertising. It also announced a deal with News Corporation, another media giant, under which it will provide all the search and text-advertising technology on News , an enormously popular social-networking site.Corporation's websites, including MySpace
Google在8月7日宣布了它取得了兩個新的突破。它與一家老牌的名為“Viacom”的媒體公司簽署了一項協定，協定中規定Google将從Viacom的MTV和自動點唱機等産品中提取視訊片段給其他網站，并且還會內建進一些廣告。這就使得Google在網際網路視訊廣告這個新興而富有前景的行業處于顯著的上司地位。此外，它還宣布與另一家媒體巨頭－News公司簽署了一項協定，Google将為News公司的所有網站提供其所有的搜尋和文本廣告技術，這些網站中包括MySpace,一個有名的大型社交網站。
These are hard blows for Yahoo! and MSN, which had also been negotiating with News Corporation. Both firms have been losing market share in web search to Google over the past year—Google now has half the market. They have also fallen further behind in their advertising technologies and networks, so that both make less money than Google does from the same number of searches. Safa Rashtchy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, a securities firm, estimates that for every advertising dollar that Google makes on a
search query, Yahoo! makes only 60-70 cents. Last month Yahoo! said that a new advertising algorithm that it had designed to close the gap in profitability will be delayed, and its share price fell by 22%, its biggest-ever one-day drop.
這些對于Yahoo!和MSN來說無疑是一個沉重的打擊，因為兩家也都一直在和News公司進行談判。兩個公司都在過去幾年裡将網際網路搜尋的市場佔有率拱手讓給了Google，Google現在已經擁有一半的市場佔有率了。它們在廣告技術和網絡方面也遠遠落後于Google，是以在相同的搜尋量的基礎上賺取的錢遠遠少于Google。Safa Rashtchy, Piper Jaffray證券公司的一位分析師估計：Google通過一次搜尋查詢賺取一美元的話，那麼Yahoo!隻能賺到60－70美分。上個月，Yahoo!稱它以前決定開發的一項意在縮短與Google利潤差距的新技術将被推遲，與此同時它的股價下跌了22％，這也是它股價跌幅最大的一天。
MSN is further behind Google than Yahoo! in search, and its parent, Microsoft, faces an even more fundamental threat from the expansionist new power. Many of Google's new ventures beyond web search enable users to do things free of charge through their web browsers that they now do using Microsoft software on their personal computers. Google offers a rudimentary but free online word processor and spreadsheet, for instance.
MSN在搜尋方面比Yahoo!更加落後于Google，而它的擁有者，MicroSoft也面臨來自這個擴張性的新興勢力的更大的根本性的威脅。除了Web搜尋以外，Google還進行了一些新的項目嘗試，而這些産品可以讓使用者通過他們的Web浏覽器免費進行工作，而這些工作使用者一直都是在他們的個人計算機上使用MicroSoft的軟體來完成的。例如，Google提供了一個簡單但免費的線上文字處理器和電子制表軟體。
The smaller eBay, on the other hand, might in one sense claim Google as an ally. Google's search results send a lot of traffic to eBay's auction site, and eBay is one of the biggest advertisers on Google's network. But the relationship is imbalanced. An influential recent study from Berkeley's Haas School of Business estimated that about 12% of eBay's revenues come indirectly from Google, whereas Google gets only 3% of its revenues from eBay. Worst of all for eBay, Google is starting to undercut its core
business. Sellers are setting up their own websites and buying text advertisements from Google, and buyers are using its search rather than eBay to connect with sellers directly. As a result, “eBay would be wise to strike a deep partnership with Yahoo! or Microsoft in order to regain a balance of power in the industry,” said the study's authors, Julien Decot and Steve Lee, sounding like diplomats at the Congress
of Vienna in 1814.
從另一方面來看，相對前面幾家更小的eBay,可能會把Google視為同盟者。Google的搜尋結果為eBay的拍賣網站帶來了大量的通路量，而eBay也是Google的最大網絡廣告商。但它們之間的關系卻是不平衡的。最近一項來自伯克利Haas商學院的研究表明eBay的收入有大約12％是間接來自于Google，而Google隻有3％的收入來自eBay。而對eBay更糟糕的是，Google已經開始裁減它的核心業務了。買方開始建立他們自己的個人站點并且從Google那購買文本廣告，而賣方則使用Google的搜尋引擎而不是通過eBay來直接和買方打交道。結果，“為了在這個行業中重建立立一種力量的均衡，eBay可能會慎重考慮與雅虎或微軟建立深層次的夥伴關系“，這項研究的作者Julien Decot和Steve Lee說。這兩位作者聽起來有點象是1814年維也納會議上的外交官。
The alliances are already being struck. Last year Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that they would connect their instant-messaging systems—both of which are much more popular than Google's alternative—and in July they said that they would extend this co-operation to “voice chat” (formerly known as “calling”). In May, Yahoo! and eBay struck an alliance in which eBay will use technology from Yahoo! to place dvertisements on its auction site. On the other side of the bargain, Yahoo! will use PayPal, eBay's online payment mechanism, for transactions from Yahoo!'s pages. (Google recently launched a rival payment system of its own.)
這個聯盟實際上已經有所行動了。去年Yahoo!和MicroSoft宣布它們将使各自的即時通信軟體實作互聯－兩者的産品都要遠比Google的更為流行――而在7月它們稱雙方将把合作擴充到“音頻聊天“（即我們通常說的“呼叫”）領域。5月，Yahoo!和eBay結成了同盟，eBay将在它的拍賣網站上使用Yahoo!提供的技術來投放廣告。而另一方面，Yahoo!将在其網頁的支付事務中使用eBay的線上支付機制――貝寶(paypal)。（Google最近已經開始使用自己開發的一套支付系統）
The strongest alliance, of course, would be a merger or takeover. MSN and Yahoo! both wanted to buy some or all of AOL, a big, troubled internet-access company owned by Time
Warner, a media conglomerate. But Google pre-empted its rivals last winter and bought a defensive stake in AOL. It still has its search and advertising technology stationed on AOL's site. Google may also make its instant-messaging service interoperable with AOL's, the most popular in the world.
當然，最強大的聯盟将會通過企業的兼并來産生。MSN和Yahoo!都有意購買AOL（時代華納旗下的一家陷入困境的大型網際網路接入公司）的部分或者全部股份。但Google卻先于對手在去年冬天就購入了一些AOL股份來防禦對手進行并購。現在AOL網站上仍然使用着Google的搜尋和廣告技術。Google也可能将自己的即時通信軟體和世界上最流行的AOL的即時通信軟體進行互通。
Ally or annex?
聯盟還是并吞？
With AOL lost to the enemy, what of a deal between Microsoft and either Yahoo! or eBay? Justin Post, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, said recently that Microsoft's “acquisition probability” is now so high that it may soon start pushing up the share prices of eBay and Yahoo! Mr Post thinks that Microsoft is most likely to bid for Yahoo! This would help Microsoft strategically, he says. Others are not sure. “I don't see it as a terribly good merger,” says Mr Rashtchy. There would be big cultural differences between a media company and a software firm. He thinks that a merger of Yahoo! and eBay, on the other hand, might make sense because both live mainly from serving online communities.
AOL已經落入敵手，MicroSoft，Yahoo! ，eBay之間将會發生什麼交易呢？Merrill Lynch的研究員Justin Post指出, 現在MicroSoft并購的可能性”非常之高，它有可能馬上會提高持有eBay與Yahoo!股票的數量！而Post先生認為MicroSoft最有可能将目标鎖定為Yahoo!。他認為，這将在戰略上給與MicroSoft以幫助。但其他人并不這樣認為。Rashtchy先生說“我不覺得這是一項非常好的收購”。媒體企業與軟體公司之間存在巨大的文化差異。相反地，他認為，eBay與Yahoo!之間的并購會更有意義，因為兩者的主營業務都是線上服務。
Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley analyst and a fellow of the Institute for the Future, a research group, thinks that any merger between the three middle powers would be a “grand dramatic gesture” that would only hasten their decline. AOL's merger with Time Warner in 2000 is the relevant warning from recent history. Big mergers also run counter to a number of other trends on the internet today, which are collectively
known as “Web 2.0”. “This is the age of mash-ups not mergers, open over closed,” says Mr Saffo, referring to the open internet standards that allow users to combine, or “mash” services.
矽谷分析家、未來學院（一家研究性組織）的成員之一Paul Saffo認為三個中間力量的任何并購都将成為一個“盛大的戲劇性姿态”，這隻會加劇他們的沒落。AOL與時代華納在2000年的并購的教訓依然曆曆在目。而且大型并購與當今網際網路的趨勢Web2.0也是背道而馳的。“這是一個發展超越并購，新公司甚于破産的時代”，Saffo先生在提及當今網際網路的開放标準鼓勵使用者們整合或者細分服務時說道。
Another argument against full-blown mergers is that the bigger and more self-absorbed the established powers become, the less likely they are to spot new insurgencies—start-ups such as YouTube, an online video site, for instance, or MySpace. Their equivalents in Prince Metternich's day were the nationalist and liberal movements that troubled the continental monarchies, and erupted in the revolutions of 1848—forcing Metternich to resign and flee into exile in Britain.
另一個反對完全并購的依據就是，網際網路企業越大，越追求自己制定的戰略，就越難發現新的創新點。例如，YOUtube，一個線上視訊網站，再如myspace。這就好比在Metternich時代擾亂歐洲大陸的主制國家的民族主義與自由主義運動一樣，最終引發了1848年革命——導緻梅特涅引退并流亡英國。
本文轉自Phinecos(洞庭散人)部落格園部落格，原文連結：http://www.cnblogs.com/phinecos/archive/2006/08/17/479770.html，如需轉載請自行聯系原作者
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