Inside the model internet cafe near Ygritte's headquarters.
Simon and Steve Case sat scattered among the rows of switched-on fifteen-inch monitors. To be honest, the CRT screens in front of him were far from satisfying, but a fifteen-inch color flat-screen monitor was already very good for this era.
In Simon's eyes, Ygritte's portal homepage was also extremely simple. Thankfully, it did not have the gaudy, mahjong-tile-style buttons he remembered from Yahoo's early days. It was clean and straightforward.
The site was arranged in a neat box-within-a-box layout. Beneath the Ygritte logo at the very top were five main navigation tabs: "Online News," "Online Games," "Personal Homepage," "Email," and "Forums." Below the menu, the left side held smaller sub-navigation links, the center displayed news content and a website directory already integrated into the Web system, and the right side contained the user login and registration panel.
There were still plenty of features planned for rollout, but in the next few years, Ygritte's portal business would focus on these five core services.
Among the five, Online News was, in Simon's view, the one with the bleakest future.
Still, before specialized, segmented news sites appeared, the news content offered by the Ygritte portal would be a powerful draw. For that reason, the Ygritte team was already preparing to build its own news operation.
Limited by the browser's capabilities at this stage, Ygritte's online games were not rich in content either. For now it only had simple board and puzzle games, and Simon had also brought out the famous Minesweeper game that, in another timeline, would not appear until 1992.
Because content was still thin, Ygritte poured more of its effort for the game section into "interactivity."
By adding point systems and leaderboards, it stoked users' competitiveness. It also embedded a text chat feature, so while playing, users could chat with friends, or meet new ones.
Of course, this was only a temporary stopgap.
Ygritte was already investing in web graphics and animation display technology, something like what Flash would become later. It also planned to work with EA, the game company Daenerys Entertainment held a stake in, to develop online web games that could be integrated directly into the IE browser.
The official name for the personal homepage feature was Ygritte Blog, and it also included microblogging.
To enrich the portal's content as quickly as possible, the personal homepage service would focus more on blogs in its early phase, though the microblog feature would not be neglected.
In addition, personal homepages had already launched verification for companies and celebrities.
Recently, under Simon's coordination, most of the executives from tech companies Westeros had invested in had opened personal pages. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Carol Bartz, Steve Case, Tim Berners-Lee, all of them.
A wave of high-profile tech executives joining was more than enough to draw the attention of America's new tech sector to the freshly born Ygritte portal.
Over in Hollywood, Daenerys Entertainment's official homepage had also gone live, and it would later connect to the full official Daenerys Entertainment website currently under construction. Simon planned to attract public attention by posting progress updates on the company's various projects in advance.
In just a few weeks after launching its official homepage, Daenerys Entertainment had already released exclusive news in quick succession: the opening of Malibu Daenerys Studios, supporting-cast information for Wonder Woman, and confirmation that Terminator 2 would begin filming soon. The response was intense.
The strength of America's film industry also meant a huge core fanbase.
Before the internet, fans could only track the films and filmmakers they loved through traditional media. Now, they could get information far more quickly, and even interact with official sources online. The pull for fans was enormous.
As for celebrities, because the internet user base was still too small, Simon had not yet leveraged his Hollywood influence.
After all, if an A-list star opened a homepage only to have a few thousand followers, it would look terrible. Simon planned to guide more Hollywood stars into joining once Ygritte's user base passed the one-million mark.
Even so, without Simon pushing, quite a few stars had opened verified personal pages on their own.
Sandra Bullock was one of them. After Simon heard, he had someone buy a brand-new Panasonic digital camera and send it to Sandra as thanks for "showing support," and as a bonus, it would make it easier for her to take photos and upload them.
Personal homepages could post images.
However, even though digital cameras had been invented back in the seventies, they never became widespread because image quality was far inferior to film cameras and they were expensive.
Most people, deep down, were hungry to show off. It was easy to imagine that once Ygritte's portal grew, in order to upload and share pictures, the popularity of digital cameras would be inevitable.
Email was unquestionably the most practical of Ygritte's five core services.
Under Simon's insistence, public email remained free, though it had certain limitations due to current technology and server capacity.
Simon originally planned to spin off enterprise email and cooperate with other companies. After Carol Bartz joined Ygritte, she persuaded Simon to drop that idea and instead assigned enterprise email operations to the software division.
Finally, Ygritte's forums adopted the mature community-forum structure Simon remembered, with sections and threads. Compared to topic-board style discussion, this format was more likely to generate higher-quality content. In the future, like personal homepages, this section would also provide the portal with a massive amount of content.
After finishing their suggestions for the internet cafe, the conversation inevitably shifted to the Ygritte portal itself.
The last time Simon spent a week in San Francisco, he later organized his ideas about the internet into a thick memo. He did not keep it to himself. Everyone present had already read it.
For Ygritte's profit model, Simon proposed, based on memory, the concept of an internet advertising network.
Many small sites and personal pages could not build their own revenue systems, yet those sites made up the majority of the internet's content resources.
By the logic of the long-tail theory, as long as you could unite enough small sites that most people overlooked into a single network and run advertising collectively, the combined scale could rival the benefits of major content players. In another timeline, Google and Amazon were classic long-tail companies.
"Simon, I've noticed a problem," Carol Bartz suddenly said as the discussion continued. She was blunt, tough as nails, and every now and then she even let loose a line of profanity. "To achieve the long-tail effect you're describing, even ten million or tens of millions of internet users won't be enough. And even if the internet has the potential to reach much higher numbers, how long do you think that will take?"
Carol Bartz was mainly responsible for sales and operations of Ygritte's software products. In Simon's plan, for a long time to come, Ygritte's software revenue would subsidize the portal's operations.
With America Online upgrading new and existing users to Web access, in less than a month, one hundred thousand users had installed the IE browser. Under the ten-dollar-per-copy ISP pricing in their agreement, that alone had already brought Ygritte one million dollars in revenue.
If, in the next few years, internet users reached the tens-of-millions level, IE browser sales could bring Ygritte well over one hundred million dollars in revenue.
Now look at Ygritte's portal. Forget profit. In the short term, it had almost no revenue at all.
It was obvious that if Ygritte abandoned the portal business, profitability through software sales would be effortless. It was easy to understand why Carol Bartz did not agree with Simon burning money on the portal.
Hearing her question, Simon looked at the straightforward executive and said, "In 1980, VCR ownership in North America was two percent. By 1990, it rose to seventy percent. Ten years, and it became mainstream. I believe the internet has that kind of potential too."
Carol Bartz shot back immediately, "Those are two completely different industries. There's no comparison."
Inside the cafe, everyone paused, watching with interest as the woman who had joined less than a month ago openly challenged the boss.
Simon remained patient. "All right, Carol. You know Gordon Moore, Intel's founder, and Moore's Law, yes?"
Carol Bartz responded smoothly. "As the number of components that can fit on an integrated circuit increases, computing performance doubles every eighteen to twenty-four months."
Simon leaned casually against the back of his chair. He knew the others likely shared Carol's doubts, so he swept his gaze around the room. "As computing performance increases, it also means we can do more on the internet through computers. Right now, Ygritte's portal services are still very crude in my eyes. In the future, I believe online news can completely replace traditional newspapers. Online games can go far beyond simple board and puzzle games, even to the point where thousands or tens of thousands of people can exist on the same game server and interact. Email, personal homepages, and forums will also become much more powerful. And it won't stop there. In the future internet, beyond news, games, and social interaction, people should be able to get novels, music, videos, and even online shopping, all of it. Now imagine this: if someone can use the internet to get all the information and services that newspapers, television, and physical stores provide in daily life, and the cost is very low, or even free, how many people will that platform attract?"
Everyone in the cafe was an industry elite. With only that description, they could easily sketch a vast blueprint in their minds. Tim Berners-Lee and Steve Case looked thrilled. John Chambers's eyes held a clear longing. Jeff Bezos rubbed his knee, his expression full of restless eagerness, as if he could not wait to rush back to Ygritte headquarters and throw himself into the work.
Carol Bartz, who had been the first to challenge Simon, also fell silent for a moment before finally saying, "But Simon, this could take a very long time. Maybe ten years. Maybe twenty. And I don't think one company can build a whole new industry."
"Of course not just one," Simon said. "In fact, there already are many. Right now we have Cisco, America Online, and Ygritte. Beyond that, Westeros has invested in Microsoft, Intel, SUN, Oracle, and other tech companies. They can all become allies as we build the internet industry together."
John Chambers, who came from SUN, heard that and said, "Simon, so you've had this idea since three years ago?"
After the 1987 crash, Simon had made a fortune of more than a billion dollars through S and P 500 index futures, and he poured most of it into tech almost immediately.
Simon shook his head and offered a lie that was not entirely a lie. "More accurately, since I entered Stanford and first came into contact with ARPANET."
In 1985, a poor young man from the bottom clawed his way up and earned a full scholarship to Stanford University.
And then.
In only a few months, he went crazy.
Simon was not only Carol Bartz's boss. Strictly speaking, he was everyone present's boss.
The room fell into a single, shared silence again.
If going crazy once could produce someone this frighteningly brilliant, then maybe, just maybe, going crazy once would not be so bad.
John Chambers was the first to break the mood. "Simon, the industry has already spawned other router companies. If we want to secure Cisco's advantage, we need to do an IPO as soon as possible, then grow fast through acquisitions. Also, Cisco staying clearly ahead will help ensure the Web spreads."
"You can discuss Cisco's IPO with James and the others tomorrow," Simon said. "But before Cisco goes public, we'll restructure it with a dual-class share structure to ensure Ygritte retains absolute control. And during the IPO process, Ygritte will also participate in the subscription to make sure its stake is maintained."
As he spoke, Simon looked at Steve Case and asked, "Steve, what do you think?"
In just one month, America Online's users had surpassed one hundred thousand. Steve Case was full of ambition.
If not for Simon as the deep-pocketed backer, pushing America Online to the public markets to raise money would have been the best move immediately.
Now, of course, Steve Case was no longer in a hurry. The company's absolute control already belonged to Westeros. If they went public too early, the original partners' shares would be diluted even further. And from what Simon just said, he also planned a dual-class structure, so Westeros clearly had no intention of giving up control of America Online.
America Online would eventually need an IPO to expand, but it could afford to build for another year or two.
With that in mind, Steve Case said, "I think we should wait until America Online's users surpass one million before we consider an IPO."
Simon smiled and nodded, then shook his head. "Still a bit conservative. Maybe you should set the target at ten million."
In another timeline, in 1993, the Web announced it was opening its standards for free, and the graphical browser, the key that unlocked the Web's door, appeared. America Online then exploded, and by 1996 it passed ten million users.
Now, Simon had released Web standards three years early, the graphical browser had already been developed, and there was a content-rich portal business in place to ensure internet content resources.
With years of foundation already built in personal computers and online networking, plus Simon personally pushing, he believed that this time America Online's leap from one hundred thousand users to ten million would still take only three years.