American History 1988
Chapter 288 - 278 They Should Be Ashamed of This

Chapter 288: Chapter 278 They Should Be Ashamed of This

"Is this the redesigned Price’s List using hypertext markup language?"

In an office inside a three-story building in Palo Alto, Dean was sitting at the computer, scrolling with the mouse in his hand.

"Yes, how does it look? Isn’t it magical?" Simon said, arms crossed, with a self-satisfied air.

Despite the web page’s simplicity, it had taken Price’s List’s programmers over half a year to wrestle it into its current form.

After all, it was a brand new programming language; to use it proficiently in just over half a year was actually quite rushed.

The fact was, the website that Simon found magical, Dean saw as an eyesore.

The whole page, although it had many clickable hyperlinks, still appeared very monotonous.

Large blocks of black and white text made it look dull.

The layout had no particular care; various functional modules were cramped together, messy like a child’s scrawl.

"Well, at least the hyperlink function does seem quite magical."

With a light click of the mouse, Dean quickly opened another window.

That was the charm of hypertext markup language; he could browse web pages entirely without a keyboard.

"Boss, does Price’s List still not meet your expectations?"

As CEO, John keenly observed the flicker of disappointment in Dean’s eyes.

"They’re pretty good functionally, but still not aesthetically pleasing," Dean said, putting down the mouse and swiveling his chair to face them.

"For users, a web page is a window for receiving information. What people first see isn’t the content on it.

It’s the overall impression of this window, like the page layout, typography, colors, images, and so on...

It’s like when we first meet someone, we first notice their appearance before we listen to what they say.

The beauty of a website page directly determines the users’ impression of Price’s List."

Dean had high standards for the website and didn’t hesitate to point out to them where Price’s List was lacking.

After all, it was preferable to address criticism at the source rather than let users complain.

"Of course, I know this is hard for everyone, because this is a new programming technology.

But to attract users and keep them, we can only make our webpages better than anyone else’s.

Luckily, we still have time; there are very few hypertext written pages on the net.

This is our chance, an opportunity to make Price’s List a household name as the internet becomes ubiquitous!"

"OK, Boss, I’ll have them redesign the webpage," John nodded, accepting Dean’s critique.

As a professional manager, he knew what needed to be done.

Seeing their serious expressions, Dean softened his tone.

"But what we have is already quite good; at least our webpage is indeed very convenient to use.

However, I hope that by the end of the year, there will be a second update for Price’s List.

You don’t need a riot of colors or images; that would be too hard for you.

Just make the layout of the pages neat and beautiful, and then we can try to promote it."

Dean understood that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the current technology also didn’t support having so much content on the web pages.

So step by step, with each small improvement, Price’s List would eventually meet his expectations.

Hearing that all they needed to do was fix the layout, John and the others also collectively exhaled in relief.

The amount of information on Price’s List’s webpage was actually vast; what was displayed now was only the homepage.

When clicking on each subtitle or functional section, there were many more pages.

If every subpage or link were counted, Price’s List contained hundreds of web pages.

It couldn’t be helped; that’s the nature of a life-service information website, where content is the core of survival.

Just sorting out the layout would likely take several months.

"Boss, once we complete this work, how should we promote Price’s List?"

John had already realized that the internet was about to undergo earth-shaking changes, and that old strategies might not apply any longer.

In Ohio, they only needed to deal with America Online.

But now? There were dozens of ISPs alone.

Just thinking about communicating with so many different parties gave John a headache.

There was also the gathering of localized information content, which would require a lot of manpower.

So was the promotion work, as each place had different situations and even laws; all of this needed to be sorted out.

Suddenly shifting his focus from Ohio to the entire country, John felt a bit overwhelmed.

"Let’s not worry about other places for now; focus on California first.

As for the promotion..." Dean spread his hands, "the old way, mail delivery."

To complete the localization landing of Price’s List in all 50 states simultaneously was unrealistic.

The current network environment couldn’t support doing this, especially since there were only about 3 million internet users in the whole of America.

However, to start a pilot in California was feasible because the internet atmosphere here was the densest.

If one wanted to become a cyber-pioneer in the future, Silicon Valley was the best breeding ground.

As for promoting Price’s List, Dean thought that the old methods worked just fine.

Indiscriminate email distribution was a good way to attract users in the early days of the internet.

The method might have been a bit of a brute force and annoying to some users, but the traffic gains would definitely be significant.

Dean was a businessman; more unflattering methods did not weigh heavily on his conscience.

"Alright, guys, this is just the beginning. Let’s tidy up the office first and then get to work."

Price’s List had rented this place, but for now, there were only a few employees, and many seats hadn’t even been tidied up yet.

Apart from Simon and John, the majority of the other employees had stayed in Ohio.

Including these two, there weren’t more than five or six people in the office.

Price’s List originally didn’t have many employees to begin with, with all positions combined totaling less than thirty people.

Since they mostly only handled maintenance for the website’s operation, as much of the content was provided by the users.

But now, because they needed to redesign the webpage, it was likely that John and his team would need to hire more people.

After sorting all these things out, it would take at least a month or two.

Although slow, the good thing was that it was still only ’92, and the real wave was still one or two years away.

After going over the things about Price’s List with John and his team, Dean got busy with public speaking at Stanford.

Cough—this wasn’t him being vain, but rather that Stanford University had invited him three times before Dean agreed to it.

After all, he had only graduated a few months ago, and then to return as an honored alumnus seemed a bit comical no matter how you looked at it.

Yes, it was this summer, Dean had donned the cap and gown and officially graduated from Stanford.

At the time, this news even made it to the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

Only after seeing the photo of Dean in his cap and gown standing on the lawn did people realize that this young man had been a student all along.

Having been active in Silicon Valley and various places on the East Coast for many years, many had forgotten about Dean’s identity as a student.

Once this dawned on them, no one was surprised anymore about him making the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

A student ranking thirty-fifth on the Forbes 400 list—isn’t that something worth writing home about?

An America mired in economic recession needed such a positive image.

Clinton frequently mentioned Dean during his several debates with the elder George, using it as prime evidence of his emphasis on technology and promotion of Silicon Valley issues, beneficial in conveying his image as enlightened and firmly committed to reform to the voters.

As the presidential campaign progressed, Dean also made quite a stir in America.

Speaking of which, the reason Stanford invited Dean for a speech was related to his recent big move.

Just last month, after AOL went public, Dean announced he would donate 6 million dollars to Stanford to support its research in the field of computing.

This piece of news instantly exploded in the media, even overshadowing the heat of the presidential election.

It’s not uncommon for super-rich individuals to engage in charitable activities, but for a young alumnus like Dean, who had just graduated, to donate such a substantial amount of 6 million dollars was almost unprecedented.

This was 6 million dollars in ’92, and it was in actual US dollars, not some unexercised stock.

Honestly, many people thought it was fake news when they saw this announcement.

It was only after the official confirmation from Stanford to the journalists that people were astonished to find out that this young man was serious.

Damn! There exists such a noble person in America?!

While everyone was shocked, they found some sort of consolation in Dean’s identity as a student.

Perhaps only a rationalist student could possess such lofty qualities.

Praise and admiration swarmed in, and Dean almost became the embodiment of the American Dream.

People saw him as a hero, and the kids saw him as an idol.

After all, even among the super-rich, few made such generous donations as Dean.

Take a certain tech star from Seattle ranking second, for instance, known as a child prodigy and computing mogul, yet there was no media coverage of him engaging in philanthropy.

Well, now the pressure was on Mr. Gates.

The Washington Post even went directly, "The first thirty-four on the Forbes 400 list should feel ashamed of themselves for this!"

To be clear, the huge reaction from the media wasn’t Dean’s intention.

His donation was not without self-interest, he had considered various factors.

First off, such a charitable act could exempt Dean from this year’s capital gains tax.

Dean’s private financial team had evaluated that, looking at this year’s financial report from Byte Company, his dividends were substantial.

If he subtracted the top bracket capital gains tax of 23%, the tax he’d have to pay wouldn’t be a small number.

This is where charitable acts came into play, as federal law stipulates that the first large donation can exempt one from that year’s capital gains tax.

Thus, it was a worthwhile transaction, even if it only worked once.

Of course, this isn’t to say future charitable acts wouldn’t be tax-exempt. They would still be useful, just that they wouldn’t exempt all the taxes anymore, but just a part of them.

Therefore, the charity of America’s rich is not as straightforward as it seems on the surface.

As for Dean’s second purpose in donating, he also hoped for a deeper collaboration with Stanford.

As a typical Stanford-affiliated company, a considerable part of Byte Company’s workforce came from Stanford.

A so-called Stanford-affiliated company meant that its founder was from Stanford and that it enjoyed the university’s talent resources.

Typical examples include companies like Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and now Byte Company.

All of these companies had intricate connections with Stanford and continued to enjoy some of Stanford’s resources even now.

Whether it’s technology, talent, or location, the list is long and varied.

In order to reciprocate Stanford’s support in terms of talent, Dean naturally returned the favor.

Byte Company would continue to grow, which would be impossible without Stanford’s ongoing support.

That’s why the donation was made, and it was why there was now this public speech.

However, before Dean could enjoy his time in the limelight for long, a phone call startled him awake.

Damn, his preferred habit of skinny dipping had just caught up with him this time.

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