Can you see clearly the Chinese monopoly?

3Q Judicial war continues to cause concern, following last week's "antitrust first case" in the Supreme Court after the trial, December 4, Tencent v. 360 "buckle Bodyguard" case will be held in the Supreme People's Court retrial. Also a few days ago, 360 of companies issued an open letter, said the internet giant through imitation, plagiarism to invade the survival of entrepreneurs, and called on the monopoly to kill young entrepreneurs.

Let's review the matter first.

360 and Tencent friction is not a day or two days, from 2010 Tencent launched the upgrade version of QQ, imitation of the 360 security guard template, became the long time the beginning of the feud. After that, the friction between the two constantly upgraded, from the initial imitation and reverse system-Tencent with the help of QQ background installation simulation software, 360 release buckle bodyguard, so that users can choose to screen QQ ads, Tencent also can not copy this product-developed to the network later on the noise of the dust on the two friends call friend's war- November 3, 2010 night, Tencent issued a notice, in the computer equipped with 360 software to stop running QQ software, forcing users to "two choose one". Although the vicious events at the time were mediated by the Ministry of Business, but the two "temper" companies apparently did not stop the pace of confrontation.

April 18, 2012, 360 in Guangdong Province High Court to prosecute Tencent abuse of market dominance, and claim 125 million yuan. In the first quarter of this year, the Guangdong High Court in order to "from the global perspective Tencent not monopoly" and other reasons, dismissed Qihoo company all lawsuit request. After that, 360 appealed again, only to perform what we are seeing now.

Is there a monopoly on Tencent? From an economic standpoint, it is generally believed that the basic cause of monopoly is entry barriers, that is, the monopoly can maintain the sole seller's position in its market because other enterprises cannot enter the market and compete with it. As a result, there are three reasons for the monopoly of entry barriers:

1. Resource monopoly: Key resources are owned by one enterprise, including key technologies (such as patents).

2. The government creates monopolies: the right of the government to produce a product or service in an exclusive manner with an enterprise.

3. Natural monopoly: Production cost is a producer more efficient than a large number of producers.

From this perspective, the opening of the Internet ensures that other practitioners are in fact able to compete on the same battlefield with Tencent. But the real problem is that Tencent, with its capital, market and technology advantages, can easily imitate a start-up or even do a better job than a start-up, and a company that can be simply imitated will not live too long.

From this point of view, Tencent's actual monopoly is more obvious. But this is just a symptom of the Chinese Internet. The industry is questioning Tencent's plagiarism and exclusivity, in the final analysis, simply because it has copied its name. But in exchange for a thought, in addition to Tencent other IT companies, there is no plagiarism phenomenon? 360. The industry has stood up against Tencent, mainly in the monopoly rather than plagiarism, which actually reflects the Chinese Internet is a very vicious phenomenon-the existing copyright awareness of the disregard for innovation and disrespect.

In fact, in China, internet companies ' external plagiarism and internal copying are commonplace. Everyone copied Facebook, several major brands of browsers are all used IE kernel set on their own vest, not to mention the domestic enterprises of mutual plagiarism. Tencent is just a way to use this approach to the extreme, especially relying on QQ this huge to scare the popular network chat tool.

According to the latest data, QQ active account number of more than 750 million, to 1.3 billion of the total number of people to calculate, conservative said, I am afraid every three people a QQ account is very normal level, which means that QQ as Tencent's most powerful user network ruler, has been deep into every family in China. This background, so that each of Tencent's products to promote the industry has a very direct impact, and once Tencent launched the tactics of plagiarism, I believe that no one company is Tencent's opponents.

This problem is more and more serious, in recent years, China's Internet "gap between rich and poor" has become more and more, in many fields, the stronger the situation of the strong. Tencent is not a single case, but Ma is the furthest away from this model.

Monopolies are only a shell, and the more deadly problem is plagiarism. Monopoly and not plagiarism, Tencent will never be 360 and so criticized, plagiarism and not monopoly, Tencent has become nothing but countless other 3,601 kind, everyone to live with each other, to see who copied the beautiful. When Tencent combines the two "organic", it finally attracts the envy of Internet practitioners.

China's Internet model, has been unable to escape from the U.S. shadow, perhaps because it is copied from the United States, so the development of the Internet from the beginning has not been separated from a "copy" word. But China's relative institutions are far too poor to protect innovation.

Give a few simple examples. When Microsoft imitated Apple's mouse, it was fined hundreds of millions of of dollars, while Facebook, a few years ago, was a start-up, because the founder was suspected of copying his classmate's campus-networking ideas-even the idea was far from the Facebook plan and was just a suspicion Facebook's CEO, Mark, also has to pay 65 million of dollars for his classmates ' compensation, and the case continues to be rehash by the client as Facebook's market capitalisation continues to soar.

In fact, with Tencent's use of QQ imposed by the implementation of imitation procedures, the United States in the history of the internet has a more famous case.

October 20, 1997, the United States Department of Justice began to use the operating system's monopoly advantage, forced to install browsers and deprive users of the option to initiate lawsuits, the move to Microsoft suffered in its history of the most stringent antitrust investigation, but also a derivative of the EU against Microsoft antitrust, such as a series of events, The voice of Microsoft's split was a wave high. Although Microsoft was finally lucky not to be split in the end, it was finally punished in a number of lawsuits, that is, because of the illegal use of media software and the operating system bundled, was sentenced to pay a 460 million dollar fine. After that, Microsoft's antitrust case became a direct trigger for the bursting of the US internet bubble, with only one-fourth of listed companies surviving the crash. Nevertheless, the US Justice Department is still sparing no effort to break any monopoly that Microsoft may have. See, in America's Sense of innovation – the wealth created by a good operating environment is more important than these giant companies.

It is this mode and thinking that the Internet and business operations of the United States maintain a high degree of activity. It is the severe crackdown on the monopoly of the giants that has formed the current open Internet entrepreneurial culture in the United States. This has led to today's California Silicon Valley, a mecca for entrepreneurs, and a slew of companies such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have made their dreams.

360 World War Tencent, the Chinese Internet is the most cattle monopoly of the significance of the case is really worth attention, but the stakes in this is far from pure right and wrong points. What China needs is a sense of copyright and the soil of innovation, and such cases, if successful, cannot solve the problem of nature.