Dream of the Internet - Chinese Dream 中国梦

The Dream of the Internet

互联中国梦

Content:

Internet Dream Forum as the Chinese Dream

The internet is what brings the world together making it so much easier to communicate with the other side of world. Although this great system was invented by the US, the Chinese have also contributed to the system greatly building up an entire dynamic internet dream to come alive. Our earliest pioneer would be the Father of Fiber Optic Communications, Professor Charles Kuen Kao (高錕爵士). In 1964, Kao discovered certain physical properties of glass, which laid the groundwork for high-speed data communication in the Information Age. Before Kao's pioneering work, glass fibers were widely believed to be unsuitable as a conductor of information due to excessively high signal loss from light scattering. Kao realized, that impurities within the glass fibers were the cause of the signal loss and by carefully purifying the glass, bundles of thin fibers could be manufactured that would be capable of carrying huge amounts of information over long distances with minimal loss and faster speed. This led to a

Contributions of Professor Charles Kuen Kao in Optical Communication

worldwide study and the production of high-purity glass fibers. Kao would later on propose that such fibers could replace copper wires for telecommunications. Initially, his idea was widely disbelieved but later on people realized that Kao's idea revolutionized the whole communication technology and industry. Today Kao's discovery of fiber light-loss properties are now recognized as an essential milestones for the development of fiber-optic communications. During his carreer, Kao has published more than 100 papers and was granted over 30 patents, one of them was the water-resistant high-strength fibers. Based on this patent, he became a visionary of modern submarine communications cables and largely promoted this idea. He predicted in 1983 that world's seas would be littered with fiber optics, five years ahead of the time that such a trans-oceanic fiber-optic cable first became serviceable. Kao's theoretical work on the single-mode optical fiber won him the 2009 Nobel

Stamp to Commemorate Charles Kuen Kao for his 2009 Nobels Prize

The Founder of Yahoo (雅虎): Jerry Yang (杨致远)

Prize in Physics. His works stated clearly that single-mode optical fiber was most suitable for long-distance communication. This vision is now applied almost exclusively, including the internet. Thanks to Kao our internet speed is so much faster than it was when we were still using copper wires.

Professor Charles Kuen Kao may be one of the 1st to Chinese to contribute by making the internet faster but he is not the last. After his generation, there are many more Chinese around the world who have and are building up the Internet Dream. The 1990's, a growing number of websites appeared on the world wide web. More websites may mean more options available, but it also means more difficult and time consuming to chose the right website. On January 1994, Stanford University, an American Chinese student, Jerry Yang (杨致远), came up with the idea of setting up a directory on the internet, aimed to help netizens find what they need and want

Web Portals and Search Engines

more conveniently. Slaving away in an old hut at the university campus, Yang designed a website called "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web". It was a directory website where he categorized as many websites as possible into a hierarchy. March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!" (雅虎) and was then known to be the world's 1st website portal (入口网站). Search engine, Yahoo! Search was launched 1 year later, March 1, 1995, During that time, Yahoo! Search (雅虎搜索) became the

biggest search engine in the world. By 1998, Yahoo became the most popular starting point for web users.

1996, 2 years after Yahoo was established, would a year of the arrow that striked 2 condors (一箭双雕). 2 Chinese contrution were made to the Internet Dream. Rankdex was invented and Sohu was established. Rankdex was a search engine invented by Robin Li (李彦宏). He began working in IDD Information Services, at US, where he helped develop a software program for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. Li also contributed by improving algorithms for search engines which led

The Rankdex Search Engine invented by Robin Li founder of Baidu

him to invent Randex. What is unique about Rankdex, from any other search engines including Yahoo! Search, is that it searches and ranks the most popularly searched websites and web documents. Li filed Rankdex as US patent 5920859. From July 1997 to December 1999 were Li's final years as an employee. He worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer internet search engine company. During this time he invented the picture search function which was used by Go.com and had with a great application value. The 2nd Condor of 1996 was launched in August by Charles Zhang (张朝阳), a Chinese university graduate, from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology in the US. He returned to his motherland and established Sohu (搜狐), a Chinese website just like Yahoo. Sohu would also launch their own search engine Sogou (搜狗), on 3 August 2004. By the ended December 31, 2007, Sohu's revenues increased 41% to $188.9M. Net income increased 31% to $35M. Sohu was ranked as the world's 3rd fastest growing company. By April 7, 2015, its search engine, Sogou, was among the top 5 biggest search engines in the world, along with Yahoo.

September 15, 1997 Google was established using a method called PageRank. This method was a copy of Robin Li's invention, Rankdex. Despite Randex was already patent, Google managed to get away with it. Using PageRank, Google would then challenge Jerry Yang's Yahoo where the 2 would fight a fierce battle for the world leading position, lasting for over 1 and a half decade. Google would initially beat Yahoo, but Yahoo would make a successful counter strike. Google would beat

The Founder of Sohu, Charles Zhang

Yahoo, for a 2nd time in April 2008. Google had 141.1 million visitors in April, while Yahoo had 140.6 million, only a narrow 0.36% win. July 2013 Yahoo would beat Google again, having 196,564,000 visitors during the month, while Google had 192,251,000. However Yahoo's victory was short lived. Pocessing the the powerful plagiarized weapon from Rankdex, Google would eventually beat their competitor, with the last laugh.

More mainland compatriots were in the wave of setting up better internet service. A Shenzhen University graduate, Ma Huateng (马化腾) founded Tencent Holdings Limited (腾讯控股有限公司) on November 12th, 1998, 2 years after Sohu was established. Tencent would become one of the largest Internet companies in the world. Febuary 1999, about 3 months after Tecent was established, the company launches its instant messenger, known as QQ. As of December 31, 2010, there were 647.6 million active QQ user accounts. Despite the

Tencent's Contributions to the Internet

fact that the users were only of Mainland Chinese ethnicity, QQ still became the world's largest online community. On July 3rd , 2014, QQ, as an instant messaging platform, had the most number of simultaneous online users putting instant messenger into the Guinness World Records. In 2005, Tecent would launch another successful internet product, Qzone (QQ空间),a social networking website. Just like QQ only Mainland Chinese used the network, however Qzone still managed to become the world’s largest social

Gallery of Sogou Logos

Founder of Tencent Ma Huateng

network, with over 200 million monthly active users in January 2009. January 21, 2011 was a time when smartphones were an essential to our daily lives. It was this date when Tencent would launch a new instant messenger, more smartphone friendly than QQ, called Wechat (微信), invented by Zhang Xiaolong (张小龙). The app would challenge the then most successful smartphone instant messenger, WhatsApp, launched by the US, a year earlier. By the end of November 2013, Wechat users would reach 600 million registered users, surpassing Whatsapp's 590 million, making Wechat the world's number 1 app for a brief period. Whatsapp would focus more effort in advertising, eventually getting a higher number of users than Wechat. The isn't because Whatsapp was a better app, but was because Wechat puts much more effort on innovations and co-operating with world leading brands than advertising. Whatsapp tend to focus on essential features only. This makes Wechat the world number 1 smartphone instant messenger app for use despite presently have a lower number of users than Whatsapp. Wechat is better than Whatsapp in many ways. For Group Messaging,

Wechat can have 40 members per group, while Whatsapp is restricted to just 30 members. Video Calls can be made with Wechat but not Whatsapp. Whatsapp has Hold to Talk function where the Hold to Talk button on the screen was pressed, the user would then record a speech. After the speech the user would release the button and the voice message would be sent instantly. Such a function does not exist in Whatsapp. Both Wechat and Whatsapp has emoticons but the difference is Wechat can be used create new emoticons while Whatsapp can not. Wechat can link to facebook but Whatsapp can not. Wechat has a special feature called Moments, which shares pictures and video's not just with friends, but with the world. Whatsapp only can share with friends. Wechat has the Look Around Feature which helps expand the user's network. Whatsapp only restrict the user network to friends. Wechat has the fun feature called Drift Bottle. The concept of this function is based on how a message in a bottle drifting in the ocean, washed up on the shores and picked up by a person strolling on the ocean shore. In Wechat a messages are typed in the Drift Bottle Function then sent out, while a random person

Company Logo of Tecent

Icon of QQ

Logo of Qzone

whom is most likely unknown to the user would receive it. The receiver can opt to make friends with the user who sent the Drift Bottle message. Again, such a function doesn't exist in Whatsapp. Another Wechat fun feature known as Shake. When the feature is activated, the user would shake the smartphone. The phone will then display all the active users around the world who are shaking their phones. Once again, the feature does not exist in Whatsapp. Wechat has a PC version available making it convenient for users to continue their conversations. Conversations made on the users PC would be recorded back into the phone. It was on January 21, 2015 when Whatsapp began to have a PC version. Wechat PC version has already exisited on January 2013 or even earlier. Wechat is free for all users while Whatsapp charges users after 1 year of use. Many people in China are also using Wechat to do business, it has an online payment feature and mini website feature to advertise, sell and buy. Whatsapp has not marketing feature available. A Scan QR Code feature is also available to login as a PC user or access a Wechat mini website. This feature isn't

available in Whatsapp. Conclusively Wechat is better than Whatsapp in so many ways the both the world number 1 instant messaging app and also the world number 1 app. Most importantly, its a multi-purpose instant messenger service. As the Chinese Internet Dream brings great progress and transformation to China, it is as well doing the same to those outside. As one of the leading companies for the Dream of the Internet, Tencent invested $50 million to the Canadian instant messenger app, Kik. The investment earned the company a billion dollar valuation. Company CEO Ted Livingston stated Kik's aspirations to become "the WeChat of the West" and said that attracting younger users was an important part of the company's strategy.

By the year 2013, Tencent, would become the world’s largest game company (游戏公司). On the same year, Tencent enjoyed an annual growth rate of 45%, taking almost 8% of the global games

market. Back in 2012, Tencent was only ranked 5th, behind the more traditional contenders, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Sony. It's a miracle to see the Chinese company reach the top spot in just a single year. In 2013, China surpassed Japan and became the world's 2nd largest online gaming market. As of 2015, China becomes the world’s largest mobile gaming market after 2014 ended with 450 million mobile gamers with over 3 billion dollars spent on mobile games. On the same year, the website, known as "China Internet Watch", predicted China will soon officially surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest online gaming market. By January 8, 2016, not long after the prediction, the whole China's online gaming market became the largest in the world, surpassing the U.S. and Japan, a dream come true. Quite fed up of being taken advantage of by Google, inventor of Rankdex, Robin Li, decided to made his way back to his motherland. Back in China, bearing a dream of "changing people's life with science and technology", he used Rankdex technology to establish the Baidu Search Engine, on the 1st day of the year 2000. By 2008, after 8 years of establishment Baidu dominated 63% of China’s search engine market and Google had 26 percent. But very soon,

Gallery of Wechat Features

From Rankdex to Baidu

Baidu would win an almost flawless victory against Google, who lost almost all its market share in China. The value of Baidu is more than 40 billion dollars, and all the local competitors dwarfed by its shining data. At this time, Baidu has taken around 80% of the Chinese market. After years of effort, Baidu has become the most popular website in China. It was also China's the largest website, China's largest website and the world's 2nd largest search engine. Among the world's 5 biggest search engines consists of Baidu and Sogou, 2 mainland Chinese search engines, and Yahoo, the American Chinese search engine, making a total of 3 Chinese search engines on the top 5 list. Under the leadership of Robin Li, Baidu established one of the most impressive search engine technical teams in the world. Its management team, product design team, development team and maintenance team are also among the best in China. Baidu brought a new possibility to the nation's search engine operating

Teenage Girls Playing Online Games in the Metro, a Typical Daily Scene in Chinese Cities

Robin Li, Delivering a Speech at the World Internet Conference

Gallery of Baidu Logos

pattern and enabled more companies to share Internet achievements. Concerning the future, Baidu doesn't hesitate to show their ambition for markets overseas, they currently got a small presence in Japan. Will it, for a 2nd time, successfully challenge the fierce Google, who reached the top by stealing the Robin Li's Rankdex technology? One thing for sure is that if Google did not get their hand on Rankdex, Baidu would be on the world's largest search engine today. Despite the fact that Google plagiarized from Robin Li's Randex, many still believe in the myth that Baidu plagiarized from Google. However if we look into to the details we will notice that there are many differences between the 2. When using the PC to search, Baidu allowed their users to create portals and to create content, and then use search technology to index it, such examples of these portals are Baidu Tieba, Baidu Knows, Baidu Wiki and many more. This is a PC search service which Google does not yet have. As a result Baidu manages to offer much more web products than Google, when checking out the products in the 2 search engine, there are 118 products available while Google only has 44. For mobile phone search, the difference is even bigger. Google has spent more energy on the Android ecosystem, how to create more Android apps, and how to create industries that might become massive in 20 years, like driverless cars, health-focused hardware, etc. For Baidu,

it’s not only about connecting information but also connecting services. For example when opening Baidu and inputting “cinema,” it will tell you what theaters are within 1.1 km of you, what time does the movie start, what seats are available to buy, and even allows netizens to pick a seat and pay directly. A whole series of actions can all be done from within Baidu. Google doesn't this kind of thing and also doesn’t see it as something they should be doing. Google only index whatever’s available on the web. It is lucky that China’s economic development has been rapid, making traditional industries openly and willingly to work with internet companies. That’s how Baidu was

Yin and Yang Symbolizing the Merging of the 2 Internet Video Sharing Giants, Tudou and Youku

able to integrate their IT system with movie theaters and is also the biggest difference between Baidu and Google in the mobile era. In the eyes of Baidu, netizens don’t really care much about whether or not these services are Baidu’s responsibility, they care more about whether they can get what they want through the search. To summarize, Baidu's general concept is the facts [of a search] are not important, what’s important is what the people think, and if people think of something, you’ve got to find a way to resolve it.

Although video sharing websites were not invented in China, the nation was one of the first to launch one. March 2003, former President of Sohu, Victor Koo (古永锵), founded the internet video sharing company Youku (优酷). December 21, 2003, the video sharing website Youku was launched. Because shareyourworld.com, the only available and the world's 1st video sharing website, was closed by 2001, Youku became the only video sharing website available on the net since its lauched date till November 2004. As of January 2010, Youku.com was ranked the number 1 video sharing website in China. February 15, 2005, Steve Chen (陈士骏) created YouTube, a video-sharing website on which users could upload, share, and view videos. Although Youtube wasn't the 1st video sharing

Video Sharing Websites

website, it was the 1st to make video sharing popular, changing the history of video sharing forever. Dominating the international market outside China, YouTube, very soon, became the world's largest video sharing website, till this very day. On the very same date when YouTube was launched, another internet video sharing company, Tudou Inc. (上海全土豆网络科技有限公司), was founded in Shanghai. Their video sharing website, Tudou (土豆网), went live on April 15, 2005. Unlike Youtube, Tudou targeted the Chinese market, By September 2007， the website served over 55 million videos each day, with the majority of the uploads from Chinese netizen. Tudou

Youtube Founder, Steve Chen, Interviewed in China

soon became one of the world's largest bandwidth users, moving more than 1 petabyte per day to 7 million users. YouTube serves a larger number of videos per day, while the total amount of minutes of video being streamed daily from Tudou is significantly larger, with about 15 billion minutes vs. the 3 billion for YouTube. On March 12, 2012, Tudou would merge with Youku. The result of the merging giant created the internet video sharing company, Youku Tudou (优酷土豆), China's largest internet tv company.

By April 2006, shows signs of China having a larger internet population than the US, with Chinese internet users spend nearly 2 billion hours online each week, while the U.S. audience logs on for 129 million hours per week. By June 2008, China's number of netizens in the country reached

about 253 million last month, putting it ahead of the United States, 220 million, securing China as the world’s biggest Internet market. By Febuary 2015, China netizen population surpassed 649 million users, more than double the entire U.S. internet population. Today China has the largest internet population, and is also the fastest growing. This means for a much larger market space for internet enterprises to grow and persue their dream in China.

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"互联中国梦—百度网络安全公益论坛" 百度专场在北京邮电大学举行

Charles K. Kao—Father of Fiber Optics

History of Fiber Optics

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Charles K. Kao - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

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[CCTV] 十集电视纪录片《互联网时代》第二集浪潮- YouTube

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