The Secret Chinese Company That Owns Everything

ever heard of tencent odds are if you are not a Chinese citizen you haven't and so it's time to learn a thing or two about the secret Chinese company that owns just about everything when you think of the biggest companies in the world what comes to mind Amazon Apple Google sure but on the other side of the globe there's a company that's just as big if

not bigger than all of those listed that's because that company does for China what a bunch of other major corporations do for the Western world tencent started out as a simple chat service and grew into a full-scale social media platform and pretty much the only social media platform in China today tencent is worth more than Facebook oh and did I mention the 10 cent is also

the largest video gaming company in the world well they are they own 100 of Riot games which owns titles like valorent and League of Legends they own 40 of Epic Games the makers of fortnite and they have millions of dollars invested in global gaming powerhouses like EA and Activision as well they own so much space in the gaming industry that your next late night energy drink

fueled gaming session is most likely heavily influenced by them and even that's not all tencent has their own music publishing and Distribution Company they produce and distribute films to the Chinese market they control just about everything that comes and goes from a Chinese smartphone guys you literally can't even function in Chinese Society without a 10 cent product that's a lot of power now you might ask

yourself hmm there's a company that provides so many services to a market of over 1.4 billion people that's become pretty much invaluable to daily Chinese life it'd be a shame if the government were to I don't know use it as a weapon and if you think that my friend you do not know how right you are mahuwateng was a quiet introverted technology student he goes by

a much different name today since his surname translates to horse in English he has adopted the moniker Pony ma as kind of a joke now Ponyboy was a talented encoder but very introverted in other words uh he's a software engineer much to his dismay he got noticed for hacking into his University's computer system for his thesis Pony ma created a program that could predict stock prices

and sold it to the company he was interning for an Innovative idea for sure but one thing you'll learn about Pony mall and 10 cents overall business strategy is that Innovation is not their strong suit quite the opposite actually okay so check it out in America we have strict copyright and trademark laws China is uh let's say a little more lenient in that area or maybe

negligent yeah yeah that sounds better anyway in 1998 Pony Moss stumbled across this site called icq an instant messaging service made by Israeli developers icq was an effective chat service giving users the ability to send instant messages in real time it was a common practice back in the day for Chinese company these to copy popular Western Services like Alibaba copying eBay for example so Pony ma

and three of his friends from college decided to form their own company tencent and rip off icq and adapt it for the Chinese market literally they they just copied it they weren't even Sly about it get this they called theirs oh I see q and out of the penguin avatar for a logo that's like copying an apple music platform and then calling it j-tunes oicq copied

icq but to Pony ma and his stablemates credit they did a decent job tailoring it to the Chinese market one example of this is that they made the file size substantially smaller than the original download speeds in China were poor at this time so making it easier to get allowed users to get it easier and more quickly tencent also made it so anyone could connect to

oicq whereas icq only allowed you to chat with people you knew after a few rough months oicq reached 1 100 million users they also had three big problems oicq grew so big they needed to buy more servers to host their users they couldn't buy servers because they were not monetized oh and they were being sued by AOL remember when I said that China had that pretty

relaxed attitude about things like intellectual property yeah America not relaxed about that but old Pony Mall had a few tricks up a sleeve he reached out to venture capitalists found some key investors got the money to buy more servers and kept a 10 cent operational the AOL lawsuit stipulated that they must cease and desist to using any form of the name icq so they rebranded oicq

to Simply QQ in qq's first year they reached 1 million users by year two they were at 50 million not a bad start they still needed a way to make money though fortunately for Pony ma one of his employees found something else to rip off a Korean website that allowed you to buy your own custom avatars this feature became very popular the microtransactions became very profitable

and the site reached 100 million users by 2010 continues to grow and as they grow they faced constant competition now in sports competition can help you bring out the best in you in business it brings out your ruthlessness around 2004 MSN was a global force in the online instant messaging industry and was beginning to break through into the Chinese market Microsoft is obviously a tough company

to go up against but tencent had one big Advantage speed you see with Microsoft being such a big multinational company it took longer for things to get done tencent could Implement changes and features in weeks when it would take MSN months 10 cent was a big company that moved like a scrappy startup and their Ingenuity paid off in the form of half a billion total users

eventually MSN was squeezed out of the Chinese messaging Marketplace by the mid-2000s 10 cents board realized that they didn't have to keep copying features and services they found on the market they started buying up smaller companies that made features that they could incorporate into QQ and if the companies would not sell or took too long to negotiate tencent would just develop their technology themselves they had

a very veto Corleone approach to mergers and Acquisitions make them an offer they can't refuse tencent had dominated the Chinese chat Market but Pony ma wasn't done horsing around with the direction of his company it had come to 10 cents attention that most of its users would use QQ to chat while gaming a side note China had two gray walls the Great Wall of China that

was used to repel Mongol Invaders and the great firewall that the Chinese government uses to monitor its users restrict websites and most notably redirect to users to a Chinese version of the site they were searching for get this the Chinese government has this law that if a foreign company wants to operate in China they must find a local Chinese company to partner with that's because China

operates their government kind of like a cartel complete with all the barriers to entry taxes and coercion that comes with it maybe a few less violent crimes okay with the laws being what they are tencent was a very attractive company for foreign gaming companies to partner with given their huge user base the problem was that these foreign gaming companies were at the mercy of their Chinese

Partners it was a normal practice to be in negotiations for months and then have 10 cent change everything right before the red line period of the contract to put pressure on the other party to do their bidding some companies partnered others pulled out but this didn't matter because if they did pull out 10 cent could just make their own version of a game for their users

not to mention they could give these games away for free and charge for the micro transactions the beauty of microtransactions is that it costs the company nothing to provide digital extras and they can produce them not a thin air copying or porting over popular games and charging your own micro transactions was 10 cents a way of printing money and the crazy thing is games in QQ

aren't even their most popular products Facebook intense sent were in a bidding war for WhatsApp when they were for sale and Facebook book one so tencent decided to make WhatsApp themselves and in 2011 they launched WeChat unlike QQ which was made for desktop WeChat was made specifically for mobile and this app would start to gain users as it gained of features it started with a push

to talk button that allowed users to turn voice messages instantly into texts this was another idea that came from the 10 cent Corleone negotiation technique but regardless of how they obtained the tech it was a hit Pony ma felt a chill run down his main since we shot was a mobile app the amount of services they could attach it to were seemingly endless so they had

picture sharing apps Allah Facebook and Instagram blogging apps social media dating apps Etc WeChat just kept bundling more and more features within its first year WeChat reached 100 million users in its first year it took Facebook about five years to get as many during the Chinese New Year it's common in practice to gift people red envelopes with money in them for good luck so logically WeChat

created a red packet function in their app to send money to people 75 million people sent money to each other via the red packet function one holiday season a collective light bulb appeared over the 10 cent HQ this led to a fully digital wallet app called WeChat pay which is now basically the PayPal of China in some cases it's actually easier to use WeChat than a

debit card in China by 2015 WeChat crossed half of a billion users I'm talking with a B it was the app with an app for just about everything a Chinese citizen needs what could they possibly do next become the app with an app for literally everything a Chinese citizen needs in 2017 WeChat launched many programs it's basically its own app store you know how we would

normally have to go to Google Play or the Apple store to get like the Twitter app this is like if Twitter was the App Store the move made it so that WeChat was absolutely integral to life in China you can call a friend order food grab a ride check movie times and pay for everything all in the same app there's basically no need for any other

apps on your phone and you know what that sounds kinda nice I am kind of tired of the prison of choice of apps on my phone sometimes from its Inception tencent has reached unprecedented success they are practically too big to fail they almost have a complete Monopoly on just about any business that can be done on a smartphone in China if you are not on WeChat

you for choosing the richest as one of your first YouTube searches and hey while you're here don't forget to like And subscribe and go back under that rock and tell all your hermit friends yeah but also China is not a fan of free speech they look too silent dissenting criticism at every turn the Chinese government is all about maintaining the idea of Chinese exceptionalism the government

is happy to help Chinese businesses grow into large corporations so that foreign investors are attracted to do business with the Pacific Rim that's only if these corporations and CEOs toe the line and play ball with whatever the Chinese government desires so what's the Chinese government to do when a company like tencent just so happens to become so successful and so integrated into the daily lives of

its users that they can't live without it why to use all that private information to censor and silence your critics of course tencent is legally obligated to hand over all personal data of its users whenever requested and they use that information to monitor censor and punish Chinese citizens information from WeChat is fed directly into a citizen's social credit score which can lead to them being essentially

shunned from society and unable to receive goods and services leaders of message boards can be held accountable for what is said in the chat rooms they moderate location data can lead to use users deemed enemies of the state to be abducted and so on just as easily as WeChat can make life for Chinese citizens the Chinese government can make life hell tencent started out copying an

instant messaging service but turned out to be the blueprint on how to become a Lifeline to an entire country full of people as they grew they gained competitors and critics and in turn they grew too big to fail as easy and efficient as they made the lives of their users the Chinese government can monitor and censor these citizens just as easily and efficiently Pony ma started

his company with the best of intentions but has he created a monster only time will tell thanks for tuning in all the way to the end folks bang that like button don't forget to subscribe and keep tuning in to the riches for more incredible content