Over the past forty years of reform and opening up, we have learned a lot from multinational companies, paid a painful price, and were cheated out of many treasures by foreigners, but one person just reversed it and used a piece of junk software to knock the Americans out. This person is Zhou Hongyi, the originator of red-clad cannons and Chinese rogue software.
I don't know whether because he is old or has some more sensitive identities, this Zhumadian person has obviously been silent in recent years, so that many post-90s and post-00s do not know who he is. In fact, china's Internet development has not yet found a second god of war like Zhou Hongyi, who has done group buying, takeaway, online car and glutinous rice network, hungry Mo, didi wang xing in front of him weakly exploded.
Before the age of 28, Zhou Hongyi, who was born in a family of technicians, was decent, studied hard, and after completing a bachelor's degree in computer science at Xi'an Jiaotong University, he read a master's degree in management, and after graduation, he went to the state-owned enterprise Peking University to write code.
A restless mind is restless after all. In 1998, he chose to resign, with 4 colleagues to create 3721, the product well, 9000 years old absolutely can not understand, is a Chinese Internet plug-in, the biggest function is that you enter the browser addresser into the website Chinese name can be directly connected to the past.
Of course, you can't use this thing today, but at that time, the Internet has just flowed into the country, everyone is very unfamiliar with the URL composed of pure English characters, people who are new to the Internet are at a loss, with 3721 Chinese the url is like its advertising slogan said", "Regardless of three seven twenty-one, Chinese internet is really easy." Driven by capital, 3721 soon caught fire.
Of course, Zhou Hongyi can not only these two brushes, he also spends money to cooperate with large websites, as long as you visit these websites, they will recommend you 3721 plug-ins and automatically download and install. Everything has a price, and this so-called convenience is exchanged for unstable system and slow network speed. Not satisfied and want to unload? There are no doors. Isn't it rogue? Yes, Zhou Hongyi is such a rogue.
It is said that people do not want faces, the world is invincible. The degree of user unhappiness is directly proportional to the revenue of 3721, and by 2003, the annual revenue has reached 200 million, and NetEase at that time was only 540 million. Do you know how 3721 makes money? Free for users, charged for businesses. In addition to some well-known websites, ordinary business websites must pay money annually if they want to enter its address library! With such a gold mine in hand, many people may be waiting to eat and drink spicy. To everyone's surprise, at the end of this year, Zhou Hongyi sold the entire company of 3721 for $120 million to the veteran search engine Yahoo, and became the president of Yahoo China.
A few years later, when the major browsers supported Chinese character input, people found that Yahoo spent nearly 1 billion yuan in exchange for a waste, which made them understand Zhou Hongyi's vision. But all this is just a small test of people's knives.
In 2005, Zhou Hongyi, who was unwilling to send people under the fence, turned into an investor, successively invested in Thunderbolt and Kugou, and went to the sea again when he led the investment of Qihoo 360. Before he entered the field of network security, Jiangmin, Rising several major players monopolized the domestic market, outsiders have no chance, but Zhou Hongyi is not any other person, he played the netizens' favorite free card, you are not selling hundreds of pieces of software, I don't want a penny! The opponent was stunned, watching 360 Security Guard seize a large number of markets in an instant, becoming the largest Internet security service provider in China.
Five years later, Zhou Hongyi won the first IPO project, and Qihoo 360 landed on the New York Stock Exchange. What really made him famous was not this but the protracted 3Q war.
In 2010, Tencent earned 19.6 billion, or about $3 billion, and made a profit of 8.1 billion, making it a veritable Internet overlord. Qihoo 360 revenue of 22.39 million US dollars, the difference between the two more than 130 times, it is reasonable to say that Zhou Hongyi does not have any qualifications to call Ma Huateng, but he made a privacy protector, said QQ peeping into user privacy, and then launched a buckle bodyguard to specifically block QQ pop-up windows and advertisements, the two sides launched a software war. At the most intense time, Tencent once announced that it would stop running QQ on all computers with 360 installed, and also started an unfair competition lawsuit.
The gods fight, and the mortals suffer. In the end, the regulatory authorities could not see it anymore and ordered Tencent to cease fire with 360. In February 2014, the Supreme People's Court also finally ruled that 360 should compensate Tencent for economic losses of 5 million yuan. However, Zhou Hongyi lost the lawsuit but won the market, with revenue of $1.39 billion and net profit of $223 million in 2014, equivalent to 62 times and 330 times before the war.
In February 2018, 360 ran from the US stock privatization to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the market value once approached the 500 billion mark, Zhou Hongyi's value rose, the highest nearly 200 billion, ushered in the highest moment, that year in the Forbes global billionaire list ranked 135, in the Chinese mainland ranked among the TOP15.
No one knows how many companies Zhou Hongyi has played with so many years, according to incomplete statistics, from BAT, Lenovo, Xiaomi to Kingsoft, Sogou, Rising, etc., domestic Internet companies with some influence have all been with 360. Too many enemies make him the most controversial entrepreneur. Some people say that Zhou Hongyi is a businessman, he is an almost crazy fighter. Not an exaggeration at all. The nickname Of the Red Cannon refers to his often wear a brash, fierce red shirt to attend events and a belligerent personality.
It is not shameful that after Ma Yun acquired Yahoo China, Zhou Hongyi led the Qihoo 360 under the banner of banning rogue software, announcing that the Yahoo assistant upgraded from the 3721 could be completely removed from the browser, which developed into another mutual blocking.
The wind is always blown away by the rain and the wind. On the 2022 Forbes billionaire list, Zhou Hongyi is worth only $2.5 billion, ranking 1238th. His latest move is to invest in Nezha to build a car, and it seems that he wants to take advantage of the new energy vehicle outlet to win back a round. But now Nezha is not Zhou Hongyi at all, according to my imagination, Zhou Hongyi's version of Nezha car should be like this: buy free, but the speed limit is 20 kilometers, you want to increase to 80 kilometers no problem, sorry, plus 1 yuan per kilometer; what? Turn right in front, turn twice at a time! It's time to brake, please scan the code to pay 10 yuan. (Some pictures from the Internet)
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