Copying and quarreling are the two "features" of China's Internet. Zhou Hongyi and Lei Jun, two Internet celebrities, went from good friends to complete enemies in 17 years, which is a portrayal of this strange circle.

"Alas! In fact, he is an actor. The plot, routines, and expressions are the same every time. Mr. Lei (Lei Jun) has seen through it, so just practice with him to the end." May 19, 2012, 1:46 a.m. In response to Xiaomi Mobile Chairman Lei Jun's Weibo post alluding to Qihoo 360 Chairman Zhou Hongyi's use of "swearing and quarrels to promote marketing," Tencent founder Ma Huateng forwarded Lei Jun's Weibo and said so.

In the Chinese Internet community, Zhou Hongyi is known for his war of words. Now, Zhou Hongyi aims his "gun" at Lei Jun, a fellow villager and acquaintance who has known him for 17 years.

“I admit that I raised the issue of Xiaomi as a means of competition, but I did not spread rumors or make things out of thin air. This was a plot, not a conspiracy.” Zhou Hongyi said in an interview with a reporter from Southern Weekend So said.

Zhou Hongyi and Lei Jun, two Internet celebrities, one is called the "King of War" and the other is called an "IT model worker". Their journey from good friends to enemies in the world subtly reflects a The Internet without walls.

"King of War" Zhou Hongyi

Zhou Hongyi's parents are from Hubei, but he grew up in Henan. When he was in kindergarten, Zhou Hongyi started fighting with his classmates and was beaten by his father when he returned home. He returned to school the next day and continued to fight with his classmates; when he first came to Xi'an to attend college, a classmate in Zhou Hongyi's class was bullied by a sophomore, and he stepped in to stop him. As a result, the "little gangster" found by the other party stabbed him in the waist and smashed two wine bottles on his head. This caused Zhou Hongyi to suffer a concussion, require several stitches on his waist, and was eventually criticized by the school.

Zhou Hongyi recalled that when he was beaten, everyone in the dormitory just watched, which made him regret standing up for his classmates at the time. At the same time, he also "saw the indifferent side of human nature." From then on, Zhou Hongyi knew how to protect himself. He has a famous saying: "Everything you worry about will definitely happen."

The year 1970 when Zhou Hongyi was born was the hottest year of the "Cultural Revolution". Ever since he was a child, he had fantasized about taking a gun and going into battle. He especially loves AK47. Some time ago, the news of the bankruptcy of the Russian AK47 series rifle manufacturer once gave Zhou Hongyi the idea of ????acquiring the company. He often goes to target practice and plays live CS when he has nothing to do. He likes to watch war-themed movies and TV series such as "Saving Private Ryan", "Bright Sword" and "Band of Brothers". One wall of his office is covered with target paper.

He only has one day a week to spend with his family. He doesn’t even know his son’s personality, and his little daughter won’t be allowed to be held. Zhou Hongyi, who has always been known in the Internet industry for his aggressiveness and fierceness, even had a few tears rolling in his eyes behind his lenses when he talked about his children. He had great restraint and never let tears fall.

"I guess Lei Jun rarely spends time with his two daughters. Like me, he has a company but no family." Zhou Hongyi told Southern Weekend reporters.

The trajectories are similar, but the personalities are very different

Lei Jun was born in 1969, one year older than Zhou Hongyi. Both are from Hubei. Their wives both work at Founder Group.

In 1995, after Zhou Hongyi graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University as a graduate student, he was assigned to Founder Company in Beijing. At that time, Zhou Hongyi was just a young engineer and admired Lei Jun, who had been the general manager of Jinshan Company for a year. This year, Zhou Hongyi asked a friend to invite Lei Jun to dinner, and the two chatted happily.

After that, Lei Jun drove the Jetta given to him by Qiu Bojun, the founder of Kingsoft, to meet Zhou Hongyi and some other friends, and went to Peking University to watch movies and skate together.

Zhou Hongyi said that he gradually discovered the "proud and unapproachable side" of Lei Jun's character. Several times, he excitedly approached Lei Jun to discuss his ideas, but was poured cold water on him. Lei once commented on one of Zhou's software as "embroidering on the toilet is not interesting."

“Our relationship has begun to fade, but we are still friends.” Zhou Hongyi said. Southern Weekend reporters asked Lei Jun for confirmation, but Lei Jun ignored him.

In 1998, Zhou Hongyi left Founder and founded 3721 Company to get involved in the field of Internet search. In the same year, Lenovo invested in Kingsoft and Lei Jun became president of Kingsoft.

3721 competed with Baidu and forcibly uninstalled Baidu's client on the user's PC. Although Zhou Hongyi later apologized to users, he has since been labeled the "father of rogue software."

When Zhou Hongyi led 3721 to fight Baidu, Lei Jun led Kingsoft to fight Microsoft.

At the end of 2003, Zhou Hongyi sold 3721 to Yahoo for US$120 million and became the general manager of Yahoo China. Coincidentally, in 2004, Joyo.com, which Lei Jun co-founded, was sold to Amazon for US$75 million.

Internet Lab founder Fang Xingdong is friends with Zhou Hongyi and Lei Jun. He recalled to the Southern Weekend reporter that around 2004, the two of them had frequent contacts. When they sold the companies they founded, they invited several friends, including each other, to have a drink together to celebrate. "It's just that Lei Jun has an average drinking capacity and starts talking more after drinking a little, while Zhou Hongyi drinks a lot, but he drinks a lot," he said. You talk more after drinking too much.”

In 2005, 3721’s old rival Baidu successfully entered the capital market. Zhou Hongyi began to regret selling 3721. Coupled with Zhou Hongyi's bad temper with Yahoo, he quickly left Yahoo China.

In order to avoid the non-competition agreement, Zhou Hongyi first made investments for about a year. In 2006, he founded Qihoo Company, focusing on search and community businesses, determined to defeat Yahoo China and catch up with Baidu. But both businesses have been struggling. On the contrary, the 360 ??anti-virus project, which has never been taken seriously by Zhou Hongyi, has grown rapidly. In early 2008, Qihoo changed its name to Qihoo 360 and transformed into a free anti-virus business. In 2011, Qihoo 360 was successfully launched in the United States.

Just when Zhou Hongyi was transitioning into anti-virus, Lei Jun led Kingsoft to successfully list Kingsoft in Hong Kong in 2007 based on the concept of games. 72 days after the listing, that is, in December 2007, Lei Jun resigned as Kingsoft’s president and faded out of Kingsoft. Like Zhou Hongyi, he became an angel investor. He also invested in a game voice company with *** Zhou Hongyi.

After 2008, the relationship between Zhou Hongyi and Lei Jun began to have some minor frictions, mainly due to the business competition between Kingsoft and 360. Entering 2010, the relationship between the two began to deteriorate - in 2010, Lei Jun founded Xiaomi Mobile; a few months later, Zhou Hongyi and Ma Huateng broke out in a 3Q war, and Zhou Hongyi believed that Lei Jun played a role in fanning the flames of Ma Huateng. In 2011, Tencent strategically invested in Kingsoft, and Lei Jun replaced the retired Qiu Bojun as chairman of Kingsoft. Zhou Lei and Zhou Lei completely turned against each other.

"IT Model Worker" Lei Jun

Lei Jun is from Xiantao, Hubei Province. He was a "three good students" in his youth. He likes to play Go and won the school Go championship in middle school. In 1994, 25-year-old Lei Jun became the general manager of Jinshan Company. At that time, Ma Huateng and Ding Lei both went to worship Lei Jun's "mountain". He works more than ten hours a day and is known as a "model worker in the IT industry."

As of 2007, when he resigned from Kingsoft’s president and CEO positions with regret, Lei Jun stayed at Kingsoft for 16 years. Being the "second in command" for many years has made Lei Jun cautious. In 2010, he restarted his Internet dream by founding Xiaomi. He has a famous saying called "Stand in the wind, and pigs will fly", which means "do the right thing at the right time."

Lei Jun once gave a Southern Weekend reporter the book "Dream of Gold Mountain" and said that he is not a person who is good at surviving in adversity. He will think things through very thoroughly in order to avoid getting into adversity in the future. According to Lin Jun, Lei Jun likes skiing and admires the feeling of being prepared and planning before taking action in this sport.

Unlike Zhou Hongyi, who was born into a working-class family, Lei Jun’s father is a government official.

Zhou Hongyi likes to read military books. For example, in order to study the Battle of Menglianggu, he found the biographies of Su Yu and Zhang Lingfu to study. But Lei Jun likes poetry, especially the poet Li Yu.

Fang Xingdong said that Lei Jun is a "relatively vindictive" person. Every time he drinks, Lei Jun always mentions some misunderstandings between the two of them in the past, and the misunderstandings are still fresh in his mind.

But Lei Jun also has a generous side. Linekong Online CEO Wang Feng has worked at Kingsoft for many years, and Lei Jun celebrates his birthday every year. When he left Jinshan, Wang Feng signed a non-compete agreement. In theory, he could not start a business, but Lei Jun let Wang Feng go. There must be a battle?

The reason for this war of words is that Zhou Hongyi, like Lei Jun, wants to make a smartphone. In early May 2012, Zhou Hongyi announced that 360 Company would develop a smartphone. The specific approach is the "asset-light" model: Huawei and other mobile phone manufacturers make smartphones based on the plan proposed by 360. The configuration of the mobile phone is comparable to Xiaomi mobile phones, but the price is at least 500 yuan lower than the 1,999 yuan for the standard version of Xiaomi mobile phones.

Zhou Hongyi’s mobile phone is only sold to 360 users and is called a “special supply machine”. Like Xiaomi mobile phones, 360 special edition phones will be sold through e-commerce models: Huawei will be responsible for them, or they will be sold by third-party e-commerce companies such as JD.com.

The purpose of 360 is to install more 360 ??software on smartphones. What mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei value is the number of 360 users. 360’s latest financial report shows that its number of active users exceeds 400 million.

This phone will not be available until August 2012 at the earliest. But the public relations war has already begun. Zhou Hongyi took the lead in retweeting and commenting on Weibo's doubts about the high repair rate of Xiaomi mobile phones.

Since Lei Jun pioneered the use of the Internet to make smartphones, the news that Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Shanda and NetEase were all involved in smartphones did not make Lei Jun react. But as soon as Zhou Hongyi started talking, Lei Jun couldn't sit still.

Zhou Hongyi compared Lei Jun to "Murong Fu". Lei Jun likened Zhou Hongyi to the "Invincible East" and accused Zhou Hongyi of being a hype man and using plagiarism methods to make smartphones. 360 countered that the Xiaomi mobile phone project was also an idea that Lei Jun "stolen" from Meizu.

An Internet industry source who requested anonymity told Southern Weekend reporters that promoting the 360 ??special machine in the form of a war of words is actually the intention of mobile phone manufacturers. Mobile phone manufacturers have no experience in Internet marketing and promotion, but Zhou Hongyi has "rich experience" in this area. He has had wars of words with Internet giants such as Jack Ma, Ma Huateng and Robin Li.

Lin Jun, the founder of the technology blog Lei Feng.com, claimed to be familiar with both Zhou Hongyi and Lei Jun. Lin Jun proposed a concept - Tables. T stands for Tencent, A stands for Alibaba, B stands for Baidu, L stands for Lei Jun, E stands for Zhou Hongyi, and S stands for Sina. These six forces determine the future of China’s Internet. "Zhou Hongyi occupies the traffic entrance, and Lei Jun occupies the huge user entrance with community culture. There must be a battle between the two." He said.