American Dream
—Boss, we’ve received a call from an enormous figure. Remington’s voice came through the intercom, unusually excited. The man who normally prided himself on his composure was suddenly flustered, a reaction Yoo Jae-won had never seen before. Even during New Year’s events, company retreats, or when they flew in Madonna and Mariah Carey, Remington had kept his expression perfectly controlled. Who on earth could rattle him like this?
—Senator Al Gore of the Democratic Party has requested a meeting with you tomorrow!
“Senator Al Gore? Really?”
—Yes!
Even Yoo Jae-won couldn’t hide his surprise. Al Gore, out of nowhere. When Remington had called the caller a big shot, Jae-won had assumed it was the mayor of San Francisco at most. He’d raised the bar slightly and guessed the governor of California. Even that had felt like people from another world. But now it was Al Gore, one of the most prominent Democratic senators, not some local politician.
“Why? Why does he want to meet?”
Flustered, Jae-won’s sentences grew shorter.
—He was deeply impressed by the vision you presented at the Las Vegas Convention Center. He also wishes to discuss internet technology and the future.
Remington continued with a detailed explanation. Al Gore had been in Los Angeles for a Democratic event when he witnessed the launch of Android 1.0 and was profoundly moved. At Remington’s words, Jae-won let out an involuntary gasp. If any other politician had said such a thing, he would have assumed they were reading from a script. But this was Al Gore. Of course he would understand.
—If you’re reluctant, I’ll decline on your behalf. The SAT is in a few days, so we can easily ask for understanding.
Remington had become so attuned to Jae-won that he could read his mood from his voice alone. Sensing Jae-won’s slight reluctance toward Al Gore, he immediately offered an out. Yet Jae-won felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Back in late spring, he had received an invitation to the groundbreaking ceremony for the 93 Daejeon Expo, but he had used the GED exam as an excuse to postpone. In response, the Blue House had moved the entire event to the day after the exam—an extraordinary display of consideration. Al Gore didn’t seem like the type to pull something like that.
“No, let’s meet. I don’t know what he’ll say, but it’s better to establish some rapport.”
Al Gore was one of the key figures Jae-won needed to connect with. This man was Bill Clinton’s running mate—the future president of the United States. Once Clinton won, Gore would be appointed vice president and enter the White House. That was why Jae-won’s master plan had listed him as someone to meet and build ties with. Of course, the original timeline had placed that meeting in the spring of next year, when Clinton would be hungry for support in his bid for the presidency and Jae-won could be the first to extend a hand. But now the other side had come to him first. Whether they met then or now, it wouldn’t significantly alter the flow of events, so he decided to proceed immediately.
The next day, Al Gore visited Jae-won’s Silicon Valley office alone. He was exactly the tall, handsome man Jae-won had always seen in the news and newspapers.
“I’m glad I reached out for this meeting. I thought the rumors about the genius boy Jay were exaggerated. Seeing you in person, I can confirm they were actually understated.”
“Thank you for the compliment. But what brings you here?”
As expected of a seasoned politician, Al Gore delivered even the most cringeworthy pleasantries with natural charm. He also used Jae-won’s American name, Jay—a name Jae-won rarely heard these days—making it feel as though he were talking about someone else. In any case, a major figure had arrived, yet Jae-won had little to offer in terms of hospitality. The Silicon Valley office was built purely for practical work, so there was no reception room. They borrowed Remington’s office and sat facing each other, at least able to serve coffee brewed from high-quality beans. Al Gore himself didn’t seem to expect any formal protocol and settled into a comfortable posture before beginning to speak.
“When the Korean president announced the information superhighway, it felt like being struck on the head with a hammer. But as far as I knew, the Korean president wasn’t the kind of person to come up with something like that. So I looked into it, and your name came up, Mr. Jay. Ever since that day, I’ve been paying close attention to your movements.”
Yoo Jae-won didn’t know what to do with himself. After all, the original architect of the information superhighway project he had given to President Roh was sitting right in front of him. Al Gore had always been deeply interested in IT and possessed extensive knowledge in the field. That was why, after Clinton’s election, he had been appointed vice president and had vigorously promoted IT support policies. Al Gore’s father had also served thirty years as a U.S. senator from Tennessee, and his greatest achievement had been the Federal-Aid Highway Act. His son Al had modeled the information superhighway after his father’s highway legislation.
‘I’ll have to be more careful from now on.’
It felt strange to receive such lavish praise from the original creator. At least Al Gore seemed to have taken a liking to him. As they talked, it became clear that Al Gore hadn’t come with any specific agenda. Jae-won reviewed everything the senator had said, wondering if there had been any subtle hints he’d missed, but there were none. Remington, who had sat in on the meeting, reached the same conclusion. Al Gore had simply been intensely curious about Jae-won. He was someone who already considered communications and the internet important enough to launch the information superhighway project himself. Then Jae-won had announced his own version and even demonstrated how innovation could occur through internet services. Naturally, his interest had exploded.
“As expected, most of your businesses are connected through the internet.”
Thanks to this interest, Al Gore became the first outsider to notice how Jae-won’s business foundations—from ID Talk to the ID Web Browser, Nextcomm, and the multilingual support in Android 1.0—were all closely intertwined with the internet.
“That’s right. I’m certain the internet will change the world before long.”
Since Al Gore was someone with a positive view of IT policy, Jae-won didn’t deny it. Their conversation ran far longer than planned. They had agreed on thirty minutes, but ended up talking for over two hours. Starting with how the internet would transform the world, the discussion eventually turned to environmental pollution issues as well. The conversation flowed so smoothly that when they parted, Al Gore expressed genuine regret and made plans to meet again.
Afterward, Jae-won issued additional instructions. He told his people to generously fill Al Gore’s campaign donation account. Gore had come to him first, and Jae-won had even borrowed one of his major achievements, however nominally. He wanted to ease at least a little of that debt through donations. Al Gore, proving he was indeed a politician, made full use of the situation. He didn’t openly disclose the account, but he actively spread the rumor that Silicon Valley, including Jae-won, supported him. As a prominent political figure, his words were immediately reported, and the company received numerous calls from media outlets seeking confirmation. Each time, they simply replied that it was not something they could confirm.
After Al Gore’s surprise visit, ID Group entered a brief lull. Jae-won had wondered whether someone from the Republican side might also come, but no one did. Thanks to that, they were able to grant sequential rest periods to the employees of ID Technology. The development teams at ID Technology poured all their energy into preparing for the August 15th launch. Whether they were in Seoul’s Rodeo team, the Silicon Valley team, or the Redmond team, everyone worked day and night without distinction. It wasn’t just hard work—most of them were genuinely pulling all-nighters. Jae-won didn’t pressure the executives to squeeze out more bugs or demand more overtime. The executives also left the development teams to their own devices. Yet a sense of rivalry had formed among the team members, and they ignited themselves. On top of that, bonuses were paid to individuals whenever they caught bugs, accelerating the phenomenon even further. It cost some money, but Jae-won was satisfied. Thanks to their efforts, tens of millions of users would be able to use their computers stably.
Furthermore, the fact that they could simultaneously release Android 1.0 and ID Office 2.0 worldwide demonstrated just how much ID Group’s capabilities had grown. Even after they began granting sequential rest periods, the company’s operations suffered no major disruptions. Upon examination, the synergy created by the successful acquisition of Microsoft was the key factor. Just as Hollywood blockbusters opened simultaneously around the world, they successfully launched both flagship products through ID Flagship Stores worldwide and handled the flood of user inquiries without major issues. This was all thanks to the professional personnel inherited from Microsoft faithfully performing their roles.
Consequently, the distribution speed of Android 1.0 was terrifyingly fast. They could indirectly confirm this through the number of user registration cards being registered on ID Technology’s servers—a rate never seen before. Three hundred thousand registrations per day, sometimes as many as five hundred thousand. Thanks to thorough optimization that significantly lowered the minimum specifications required to run Android 1.0, the number of users had increased accordingly. After all, anyone with a 286 AT computer, more than 1MB of memory, a VGA card, and a 10MB hard disk could install Android 1.0. Naturally, running it on such minimal specs meant most of Android 1.0’s powerful features would be unavailable. In particular, Unicode character support, which consumed a lot of memory, was impossible. A single font was 5MB, so it was excluded during installation. There would also be significant restrictions on running applications. ID Office 2.0, which was exclusive to 32-bit computers, wouldn’t even install. Yet many people were still installing Android 1.0 because of Virtual Boxing. There were plenty of users who wanted to experience on their own computers the polygon-heavy graphics that had previously only run on graphics workstations. According to network game matching statistics, the number of online matches had already exceeded 200,000. At this pace, it seemed likely they would surpass one million matches before August was over.
Besides Yoo Jae-won, there were others smiling brightly at Android 1.0’s massive success—the advertisers who had placed ads in the adware program. Having experienced the advertising effectiveness of Android Alpha firsthand, most advertisers renewed their contracts despite the significantly higher ad rates. The number of ad slots had increased from twenty to twenty-four, but the cost per slot had nearly doubled or tripled, reaching $500,000 per slot. Once again, the standard advertising period was 100 days.
However, there was one problem. Complaints had started coming in ever since the Android 1.0 preview version was released. The issue was stability. In the Alpha version, ads would slide up from the bottom right upon boot completion. Because of DOS’s inherent limitations, users often had to reboot, and each time a new ad would appear. But Android 1.0, running on a Unix kernel, had stability on an entirely different level from DOS. Its resource management was so excellent that the computer never slowed down even when left running for long periods. Once turned on, there was no need to reboot until the user deliberately shut it down. This created anxiety among advertisers that their ads wouldn’t be exposed to users as frequently as they had been with Alpha.
Jae-won naturally introduced a new policy. While Alpha had shown ads every time the system rebooted, Android 1.0 would display an ad once every hour. In exchange, the ad size was reduced so as not to disturb people working hard, and ads wouldn’t appear when users were running games or work applications in full screen. Since ads would appear once per hour—far more frequently than with Alpha—the advertisers were all satisfied. The smaller size was a bit disappointing, but everyone understood that frequency of exposure mattered more than size.
Android 1.0 had already generated $12 million in revenue from advertising sales alone before its official launch. Since the contracts renewed every 100 days, it was essentially creating another stable cash cow. There was also plenty of room for ad slot prices to rise further depending on advertising effectiveness. If they implemented microscopic targeted advertising using user registration cards, ad revenue would increase several times over.
What pleased Jae-won most, however, was the recognition from the IT industry. After witnessing Android 1.0’s tremendous success, the computer industry shifted from a wait-and-see attitude to active engagement. In other words, professional software companies began announcing one after another that they would develop versions of their programs exclusively for Android 1.0. Until now, the companies that had shown active support for Android 1.0 had mostly been game developers. Android had positioned itself as a gaming operating system, and general users had responded enthusiastically, so that was only natural. Now, companies that developed the various specialized creative tools used to create such games were also beginning to move.