Kapitel 493: Chapter 494: Another Paranoid Named Steve
[Chapter 494: Paranoia]
After lunch, Virginia pulled the two women outside for a walk while Eric headed into the study with Chris.
"Emily's reaction just now seemed a bit off, didn't it? She never got shy about talking marriage before," Eric said as he settled into a chair beside the desk, his curiosity bubbling over.
Chris shook his head and chuckled. "Maybe it's because they're pregnant. When you told me the news, I had a chat with Emily about a few things," he said, shaking his head as if the outcome wasn't great. He quickly changed the subject. "What's going on in Europe? There's a lot of noise coming from that direction."
Eric summarized the situation with Euro Disney for Chris.
Chris listened intently and shook his head. "A billion dollar budget has ballooned to five and a half billion. It's definitely spiraled out of control. If it still can't turn a profit after the overhaul, what do you plan on doing?"
Eric shrugged. "We have to stick it out. This project affects the livelihoods of thirty thousand people and consumed so many resources from the French government. If I dared to shut it down, it would be like tearing up our relationship with the French government."
Chris nodded in agreement, sharing Eric's viewpoint. He had looked up some news regarding Euro Disney due to its sudden closure.
The French government not only sold the land to Disney--equivalent to one-fifth of the Paris city area--at a rock-bottom price back in the 1970s but had also provided over a billion dollars in project subsidies. Additionally, they built a high-speed rail between Paris and Euro Disney, a further investment of several billion dollars. All this sprang from the optimism surrounding Euro Disney's prospects. If Disney backed down due to below-expected profits after consuming so much public resources, it would inevitably lead to a fallout with the French government amid public scrutiny.
"Michael Eisner's competence is undisputed, but from his last few moves at Disney, it appears he has let the company's success go to his head. If he continues to lead Disney, it won't bode well for the company. However, judging by his actions at Universal, he seems to have regained some composure," Chris commented, recalling Eisner, the mastermind behind the Euro Disney project.
Eric recalled that, in the original timeline, Disney's market value had continued rising in the mid-1990s, but only due to an overall improvement in the American economy. Their profits had been declining year after year, and the expensive acquisition of ABC had been a drag on the company, pushing Disney's debt ratio to a dangerously high level.
It was only after Michael Eisner stepped down that Robert Iger implemented a series of reforms which revitalized the movie giant.
At this point, Eisner being out and moving to Universal could be seen as beneficial for both him and Disney. Disney would no longer be hindered by Eisner, allowing it to grow rapidly. A composed Eisner could also begin anew at Universal.
In Hollywood at that moment, Eric thought that there weren't too many outstanding talents. Most studio executives were more about preserving the status quo than pushing for innovation. The few he recalled from the 1990s were Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Eisner.
From what he currently knew, the chances of Barry Diller returning to scoop up Paramount were slim; it wasn't easy for the Hollywood tycoon to come back. Katzenberg was still at Disney, and Eric had no intention of forcing him out as Eisner had done. This meant that his biggest competitor in Hollywood would undoubtedly be Michael Eisner.
"I heard Steve Ross isn't doing well?" Eric suddenly interjected, thinking along these lines.
Chris looked puzzled but nodded. "He probably won't last through the year."
"Without Steve Ross's pressure, Warner's already intense internal conflicts are likely to come to light, making it impossible for them to compete with Firefly. Going forward, Firefly's biggest rival would probably be Universal."
"From your tone, you seem not to hate Michael Eisner?"
"It doesn't matter if I hate him or not. I've always admired capable people. Besides, having rivals keeps things interesting; life would be quite dull otherwise," Eric admitted candidly, aware that everything he possessed was thanks to his lucky breaks and felt deep respect for those tycoons who thrived without an edge.
After discussing some Hollywood matters, Eric remembered what Chris had said upon his arrival earlier. "Didn't you mention you had good news for me? What is it?"
"Can you go online here?" Chris stood up with a smile.
Eric nodded, realizing what Chris was getting at. "You've got results?"
"Yes, just a moment," Chris replied with a grin, stepping out of the study and quickly returning with a laptop from his car.
Eric pushed aside his Apple notebook on the desk and connected the network cable as he was a bit surprised to see Chris pull out an IBM ThinkPad.
The legendary ThinkPad series! Eric vaguely remembered seeing a magazine report about IBM about to launch its laptops to compete with Apple. He didn't expect it to have already come out, and that it was a ThinkPad. He had bought one himself in his past life before Lenovo acquired IBM's laptop business, likely marking ThinkPad as one of the longest-lasting laptop brands.
"ThinkPad 700C, just released recently. I got one for testing; it has specs comparable to Apple's Powerbook, but it runs the latest Windows 3.1 system, which I think is much simpler to operate than the Mac," Chris explained, having invested considerable effort in understanding this tech due to Firefly's focus on computer and internet investments.
As the familiar Windows interface appeared, Eric quickly noticed the prominent 'e' icon on the light blue background desktop.
Chris skillfully connected the laptop to the internet, watching Eric hover the mouse over the software shortcut. "This is the software logo designed according to your sketches. Right now, it's still in the Alpha version for internal testing; the Beta version for users is set to launch at the end of November, while the final version will come out next year after user testing and adjustments."
Listening to Chris, Eric connected to the network and opened a graphical interface browser that had arrived two years ahead of schedule in his original timeline. After a brief loading period, a gray-schemed browser interface appeared on the screen with the eye-catching 'I Explorer' logo in the upper left corner, followed by a menu bar, navigation icons, and the address field.
When the homepage loaded, Eric was pleasantly surprised to see, "I can't believe Yahoo's homepage is already finished."
Chris nodded, then shook his head. "If it were just a simple directory collection site, it wouldn't last long. But your proposal had more than that. The team is currently testing and optimizing the search algorithm because they believe that feature will be integral to Yahoo. What you see is just our test server; we've gathered and organized around eight thousand websites in categories like news, finance, technology, and education."
Eric clicked on a few sites in the directory to test the speed, which was very smooth, and noted that Yahoo's team had designed the homepage following the straightforward design concept Eric had suggested. It didn't resemble the cluttered portals he saw in his past life. However, he realized that the root cause still stemmed from the technical limitations of the time. Having thought that, Eric looked at the homepage again; while very simple, he sensed it was missing something.
"Images! Right, websites shouldn't all be text; there should be images too," he said, casually clicking on a few more sites, where, indeed, he found pictures.
Chris seemed surprised but quickly explained, "I figured you wouldn't care about this; the IE management is currently in talks to acquire a company called puServe. I was going to bring the related documents next time."
"puServe?" Eric repeated it but couldn't recall what the company did. "Do they have something to do with images?"
Chris nodded. "They developed a very suitable image format for the current slow internet speeds that can compress images by 50% without losing quality. It's called Graphiterat, but everyone just refers to it as GIF. The images you saw on those sites mostly use this format."
Hearing the term GIF had Eric immediately nostalgic.
So familiar!
Chris noticed Eric's raised eyebrows of recognition but paused in confusion before continuing. "The IE team plans to refine the GIF image format algorithm after acquiring the company and apply for related patents, then promote it via the IE browser."
Although Chris didn't explain explicitly, Eric quickly caught on. Promoting a new image format through IE would undoubtedly encourage many sites to adopt it. If this algorithm format was patented, other companies wanting to develop software using GIF would need IE's authorization, creating a technical barrier that would hinder companies lacking technical strength from entering the browser market. Even powerful software firms like Microsoft would have to expend considerable time and money overcoming such hurdles to create a browser that could display GIF images. In a time of rapid technological growth, even a few weeks of delay could see competitors pull ahead, let alone months or years.
"By the way, has the software patent for the IE core been applied for?" Eric asked.
Chris nodded. "We certainly applied for all feasible ones. Tim Berners-Lee also agreed to slightly favor IE's technical standards while promoting the web. However, many technologies are still open-source, so bypassing our patents isn't overly difficult. What we can do is set technical barriers around related applications, like that GIF format."
Eric felt a bit disappointed upon hearing this.
Chris comforted him, "However, as long as we maintain our technical and time advantages, we can keep our lead. Plus, IE is free. The team doesn't understand this; they feel the software is fantastic and would surely yield substantial profits if commercialized."
"That was my agreement with Tim Berners-Lee; you were there," Eric said. He wasn't too concerned about the profit from IE software sales; the key was in the vast potential user base. "And you'll understand the benefits of this approach down the road."
"Well, hopefully," Chris didn't say more. The entire world had only around twenty million internet users, vastly outnumbered by personal computers. So, giving up profits from IE software sales didn't sting too much.
After reviewing the progress from Yahoo and IE, Eric asked, "What about the online email service? To be honest, I'm more excited about this. Having online email would make communication so much easier."
Chris shrugged. "I can't show you that. The chief engineer named Steve Mitnick at Hotmail is a perfectionist and a bit of a paranoid. I've asked a few times for an update but got nowhere. The core program for Hotmail has already been written, but he feels the system's security isn't tight enough and is still conducting closed tests on internal servers. I only got to try it out last time when I visited Hotmail's headquarters in Cambridge."
Eric laughed, "Another paranoid named Steve!"
Chris understood Eric was referencing Steve Jobs and chuckled. "Yeah, but it's probably for the best. If Hotmail is to be an online communication tool, it absolutely needs to ensure its security. So, I just let that guy tinker with it. I heard he's quite a skilled hacker too."
*****
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