After returning to Shanghai, Lin Youde brought two good news. The first was that the red envelope team had been formed and secretly arranged to be secretly developed and tested in designated places.

The second is that Toutiao’s negotiations with a browser company have reached the last moment.

"130 million US dollars?" Zhou Yujie saw the final asking price in his hand and began to ponder.

Lin Youde said: "Mr. Zhou, although this Dolphin Browser has only been on the market for two years, it has received two investments from Sequoia Capital and Qualcomm. When Qualcomm invested two months ago, its valuation was as high as US$100 million."

"Is this company's headquarters in the United States?" Zhou Yujie asked after seeing the introduction later.

Lin Youde replied: "It was in Silicon Valley. At the beginning of this year, they came to China and wanted to enter the mobile browser market in China. China's headquarters is in Chengdu."

Zhou Yujie smiled and asked, "Why do they want to sell it? It should be good to see their market share?"

Lin Youde said: "It's because Google. In the past few years, when the Android market was not absolutely stable, various browsers and search engines had a certain market. But now Google monopolizes almost all non-Apple phones overseas and has begun to forcibly promote the Android system to come with Google search and Chrome browser, which has almost sentenced other similar companies to death.

And I heard that Google is also planning to spend a lot of money to buy out search engines and browsers in the Apple mobile phone market. Now, overseas browser companies are actually in danger."

"I am not interested in the overseas market. Let's talk to them. We can buy out their technology and domestic teams. We can only use it in the domestic market in terms of technology." Zhou Yujie said after thinking for a moment.

The terminal of Internet giants is monopoly, which is the same both at home and abroad.

In later generations, Google began to vigorously promote its browsers with the absolute monopoly of the Android system, which led to the difficulty of other browsers' businesses. Even those browser giants that were famous in the PC era, such as Firefox, Opera, edge, IE, etc., had a lower and lower share in the mobile market, and all of them were not enough for Google to play.

In addition, if a Chinese-funded company acquires a browser in the United States, then any competitor’s accusation will fall into a whirlpool of public opinion and politics.

This kind of business is neither too big nor too risky. Zhou Yujie naturally won't waste this money to acquire a browser that will inevitably have a dismal market in the future.

However, although Dolphin Browser does not have its own kernel, years of experience have given them excellent optimization and operation experience, and these capabilities are still very valuable.

Lin Youde said: "I have considered this before, but they only want to sell the dolphins as a whole."

"Are there no other brand to choose from?" Zhou Yujie asked.

Lin Youde said: "At present, there are basically giants behind the famous browsers in China. According to the ranking, UC is the first, Alibaba is behind QQ browser is the second, Oupeng browser is behind European consortium, behind it is 360 browser and Sogou browser, and there are some very small-scale browsers and not good technology. It is better to do it yourself if we acquire this kind of browser."

"Wait." Zhou Yujie suddenly said: "What do you think about us acquiring Sogou?"

"Sogou?" Lin Youde was stunned for a moment and said, "Mr. Zhou, do you want to acquire the entire Sogou company?"

Zhou Yujie nodded and said, "Yes, Sogou has been independent from Sohu. Recently, I heard that there have been capital actions. If we can acquire it, it would probably be the most perfect combination.

Sogou's business is mainly browsers, input methods and search engines. We have no Toutiao's three businesses. After the acquisition, our traffic can promote these three businesses. If these three businesses are successfully done, it will inversely assist our Toutiao's position in traffic."

Sogou was born in Sohu in 2004. Its early business was input method. Sohu was at its peak at that time, and Sogou was just a marginal business.

But the development of the Internet is magical. The former main business portal was gradually eliminated by search engines led by Baidu, and the input rule began to show its strong potential, because whether it is shopping, search or social chat, input method is required. As Internet giants began to pay attention to user data, input method has become one of the most core businesses. Although it cannot be profitable, it has a very large value.

Around 2008, Internet giants began to deploy input method business, but Sogou was established for the longest time and formed a strong first-mover advantage. It has been in the leading position in the market over the years. Only Baidu has promoted its Baidu input method to seize a lot of markets with its strong traffic.

After realizing it, Sohu began to develop its own Sogou. The first product was a browser, and the second product was a search engine. The promotion method was very simple. Inserting links or guidance into the input method, it easily grabbed a certain market share.

Lin Youde thought for a while and said, "But, Sogou's business itself is developing well, so they may not be willing to sell it. Moreover, the budget will increase too much by acquiring such a company."

In 2010, Alibaba, which did not enter the input method business, invested in Sogou, and Sogou also separated from Sohu and operated independently. However, two years later, Sogou and Alibaba parted ways and repurchased 10% of Alibaba's shares for US$20 million. In this amount, the valuation was about US$250 million.

However, this is an internal transaction, and there may be other unknown stories in the middle. Currently, venture capital has a valuation of Sogou of up to US$600 million, and the acquisition may increase a lot, which is far beyond the previous budget.

"Try communicating with Sohu, maybe there will be good results." Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "As for the acquisition funds, based on the current development of our Toutiao, loans from the bank should not be a problem."

Although Toutiao and Quxin have a lot of cash on their accounts, these are all for special purposes, and Zhou Yujie doesn't want to use them casually. Moreover, from the perspective of business, he acquired the early stage and then raised funds after the operation is completed, and the profit will be higher. Therefore, this acquisition should be as high as possible in the name of the head office.

Although the profits of overseas games are quite large, they are not enough to acquire giant companies like Sogou. However, from a business perspective, it is naturally not the best thing to do without your own funds.

It is difficult for Internet companies to obtain loans, which refers to those small and medium-sized enterprises and banks do not dare to use loans without mortgages because they do not understand Internet business. This is also the reason why the shareholders behind the giants in the early days of the Internet were all overseas venture capitalists, because at that time, only foreign investors dared to gamble on a bunch of small Internet companies.

After the scale of Internet companies became larger, especially 10 years later, the global economy has accepted the rise of the Internet industry. Banks will not arbitrarily refuse Internet companies with a certain market share, especially the acquisition target Sogou itself is a normal business enterprise.

Lin Youde nodded and said, "Okay, I'm going to go to Yanjing now and visit Zhang Chaoyang."

Zhou Yujie thought for a while and said, "Go and try it first, but if Zhang Chaoyang is really going to sell Sogou, then he will not only give us this opportunity. BAT three sides will probably join in at that time. In this regard, I guess we must also be prepared for failure, so don't give up that Dolphin Browser, and negotiate with both sides."

No one is a fool. Since you want to sell it, of course you have to find a few buyers. In the later 13 years, Baidu, Tengxun, and 360 all tried to acquire Sogou. 360 almost succeeded, but unfortunately, the peach was stolen by Penguin later. If Toutiao wants to participate, it will probably take some time.
Chapter completed!