parentshiftbook Chapter 187 The Struggle for Order
Chapter 187 The Struggle for Order
Chapter 187 The Struggle for Order
In Ernst's office, László's secretary had just left, and the closed door still seemed to retain a trace of his departure.
A short while later, a rhythmic knock broke the brief silence, and Hamilton appeared in the doorway and walked into his office.
Ernst looked up, his gaze questioning, "What's wrong?"
Hamilton's arrival at this time couldn't possibly be just to invite him to dinner, could it?
Hamilton walked with steady steps to the sofa area of the office and sat down next to Ernst.
He adjusted his posture slightly before speaking, "It's not the newly established Google Films company yet."
Ernst frowned slightly upon hearing this, but he didn't reply immediately, waiting for Hamilton to continue.
"Do you really think we need to collaborate with MIT?" Hamilton stared intently at Ernst, seemingly trying to glean an answer from his expression.
Ernst was even more confused; he simply couldn't understand why Hamilton would suddenly ask such a question.
After reaching a cooperation agreement with the Boston Consortium, Boston's abundant higher education resources are naturally a valuable asset that cannot be ignored, and he cannot simply leave them unused.
Therefore, after the establishment of Google Movies, he actively acted as a bridge, facilitating the collaboration between Google Movies and MIT to jointly form a research and development team, hoping to work together to overcome key technical challenges in the film and television industry.
It's important to understand that MIT's responsibility in this collaborative project goes beyond simply providing free professional talent; it also requires a substantial financial investment.
In name, the two parties are in an equal cooperative relationship, jointly funding the research and development of cutting-edge technologies that are of mutual interest.
However, in reality, MIT accounts for the majority of the funding, while most of Google's investment is used through carefully arranged intermediary companies to purchase equipment and supplies needed for the project's daily operations.
The Boston consortium will handle this portion of the money; how could they not leave some oil behind after squeezing through pork?
His relationship with the Boston consortium is one of close cooperation and mutual benefit; the key factor in maintaining the stability of the partnership is that the other party must benefit.
Take the current collaborative project as an example. Both parties have committed to investing $1800 million each, for a total of $3600 million in R&D project funding.
In reality, about $10 million of this huge sum of money is intercepted by intermediaries. Of this intercepted money, 40% ends up in the pockets of the Boston consortium, and 60% ends up in Ernst's personal pocket.
From another perspective, if Ernst's stake in Google is less than 30%, then Google's $1800 million investment would be equivalent to his investment of $540 million.
So for him, this collaboration was almost equivalent to paying no cost at all, and he even made a profit; it was just a matter of transferring money from one hand to the other.
Of the other purchased equipment, after the collaboration ends, MIT will probably only receive desks and chairs.
Ernst anticipates that this clever use of resources to maximize benefits will become the norm in future project collaborations.
To his surprise, problems arose during the implementation of the first collaborative project.
"Tell me the specifics of what happened."
This was no small matter. Ernst's expression became extremely serious, and his tone unconsciously became more forceful.
It will become commonplace for its subsidiaries to receive free funding from universities every year, and this must be taken seriously.
Seeing Ernst's seriousness, Hamilton didn't hide anything: "It's mainly a technical issue. Ruhr has approached me more than once, believing that collaborating with MIT is simply a waste of time and money."
As he spoke, he shook his head slightly, his face full of helplessness.
Ruhr Powell, the chief technology officer of Google Video, is one of the top technical talents that Google poached from the University of California, Berkeley, at great expense.
Within Google, he is one of the few engineers who can enjoy L9 level treatment, and his authority and influence are not to be underestimated.
"The most crucial element in video downloading lies in the transmission technology, and the length of time it takes for users to download is almost the sole determining factor in the user experience. Ruhr's view is to leverage Google's mature PSP technology and optimize and upgrade it to improve video download efficiency."
"But the MIT team held a completely different view. They felt that optimizing existing technology was meaningless and could not achieve a revolutionary breakthrough. They argued that we should invest our efforts in researching a completely new technology." Hamilton elaborated on the differences between the two sides, his tone somewhat helpless.
"The two sides argued fiercely over this fundamental issue, resulting in a stalemate. If this core issue cannot be resolved as soon as possible, the project cannot move forward and will remain stagnant."
Ernst understood: what appeared to be a disagreement over technological approaches was actually a struggle over the order of technological development in the United States.
How did science and technology develop in the United States in the past?
The federal government collects taxes and then allocates these funds specifically to renowned research universities within the country.
After receiving funding, these universities took on the important task of basic and applied research.
When investors in the national or commercial sectors suddenly have an idea to develop and manufacture a new product or achieve a new technological breakthrough, they often go to these universities to find the corresponding theoretical basis in the existing research results of the universities.
Once a theory is found to have the potential for productization or technological breakthrough, collaborations will be established with universities to jointly invest resources in in-depth research.
In other words, it is university-led or professor-led.
This order of technological development was established during the Roosevelt era and has been used ever since.
But the rise of computers and the Internet has disrupted this order.
Because these industries need data and computing power, which are fundamentally inseparable from business.
Researching first and then commercializing is not feasible. You must have a business model first, and then overcome technical difficulties based on user and market needs.
Just like Google Video, MIT's idea was simple: if you need transmission technology, then we'll pretend that it doesn't exist in the world and find the best one through repeated experiments.
Of course, there's another subtle motivation behind this that can't be ignored: winning an award.
What is the best?
It definitely surpasses the technology that has been developed so far.
Even if you don't win an award, as long as you get results from your research, it will be a huge boost to your reputation.
Since it's not like you're paying out of your own pocket, this is a way to get free access to universities.
But Google can't do that; everything has to be based on commercialization.
I already have this technology, and I have enough users to support and provide feedback. It's a mature technology, so why should I invest my time and money in something unknown?
Even if you find a better transmission technology than mine, so what? How long would it take to develop that technology?
How long will it take to bring it to market? And will it be able to integrate into the market and withstand commercial use?
So Ernst didn't even need to think before saying, "Tell Ruhr to ignore MIT for now. Since the two sides can't reach an agreement, then we'll develop it ourselves."
Ernst knew better than anyone what the future order of technological development would be. Who would lead information technology in the future? Not top-tier universities, not laboratories, but large corporations.
The internet industry was created by commercial companies, and artificial intelligence also first appeared in commercial companies, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, etc. It was enterprises, not universities and laboratories, that first applied and popularized these technologies.
"But—" Hamilton hesitated for a moment upon hearing Ernst's decision. "But doing this would completely offend MIT."
He expressed his concerns, noting that MIT has an extremely high reputation and strong influence in the academic and research fields, and that a falling out with such an institution could bring a series of unpredictable negative consequences.
What is this? This is a contest.
The two sides have clashed over technical issues, and Google's decision to develop its own technology independently, bypassing MIT, is undoubtedly a declaration to the other side: We'll see whose philosophy and technical approach are truly correct in the end.
"Then let's teach them a lesson and show them that times have changed," Ernst replied with an air of dominance and confidence.
"I have full confidence in our PSP technology and firmly believe that it is the most suitable and best technology choice for us at present."
When Google Mail was being developed, the need to enable users to conveniently log in to their email accounts from any computer and smoothly share emails inevitably involved information transmission issues.
In the process of overcoming this challenge, Google's technical team successfully developed P2P technology.
Later software like Storm Player, Xunlei, Kuaibo, and those movie download software all used this technology.
Ernst wanted to go straight to streaming technology, but with the current hardware and bandwidth, it was simply impossible.
It's technically possible to develop it, but external conditions don't allow it.
Of the remaining transmission technologies, P2P technology is undoubtedly the most advantageous.
This is because the technology is platform-to-platform, rather than the center-to-platform theory of previous transmission technologies.
Take a movie that needs to be downloaded as an example. The normal logic is that the user requests the website and downloads it from the website's server.
Unlike P2P technology, which sends download requests not only to the server but also to all computers, P2P technology sends them to all computers.
Because this movie is not only available on the website server, but also on other computers that have downloaded it.
So it's like a super matchmaker, helping you download different movie clips from all the computers that have this movie, and then piecing them together to make the movie.
Anyone who downloaded adult videos in the early days knows that on platforms like Kuaibo, the more users downloading, the faster the download speed.
The download progress bar for the movie is not displayed sequentially from beginning to end, but rather in stages.
For example, a segment of one to three minutes might be downloaded, but a segment of four to six minutes might not be downloaded yet, while a segment of seven to ten minutes might be downloaded, and it's always intermittent.
This is because he requests data from multiple computers simultaneously. Some of these computers are well-configured and fast, and the segments you download are extracted from these computers.
This technology is historically proven and more in line with the nature of commercialization. Ernst firmly believes that MIT cannot develop a better transmission technology under the existing hardware environment.
The key issue is the struggle for order, and this cooperation will serve as a way to defuse the arrogance of these universities.