原作者：
来源What Valley Companies Should Know about Tencent
译者Lio Joslin
Quick quiz: Who are the three largest Internet companies in the world by market capitalization?
快答：市场资本最大的三大网络公司都有谁？
If you guessed Google and Amazon you got two right, but I’m betting few of our American readers guessed the third. I certainly wouldn’t have a year ago. It’s not eBay or Yahoo; it’s Tencent. If you are in the Web space and haven’t heard of them, read this post, because Tencent’s cutesy penguin mascot is only going to cast a larger shadow in the global Web world in coming years.
如果你猜的答案中有谷歌和亚马逊，你就对了三分之二了，但我保证绝大多数美国人猜不到剩下的一个是谁。要在一年之前，我也不知道这个答案，不是eBay，也不是雅虎，而是腾讯。如果你在网络空间尚且没有听说过这个名字，算你OUT了，有必要看着这篇文章，因为过几年，腾讯那只忸怩发嗲的小企鹅只会在全球网络世界中投下巨大阴影。
Low-key Tencent is the largest, most profitable Internet company in China and it has just under 400 million active users–comfortably bigger than the population of the United States. Tencent recently bought 10% of Digital Sky Technology, which in turn owns huge chunks of Zynga and Facebook.
低调的腾讯是中国效益最好的因特网公司，他拥有将近4亿用户，这个数量比美国人口都多得多，而且腾讯最近还收购了数字天空科技公司10%股份，而这家公司则拥有着Zynga和Facebook的大量股票。
In the past, Tencent has held joint venture talks with Google and Facebook and made acquisition offers to a few smaller Valley companies that haven’t resulted in deals. But if investor pressure on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is anything like investor pressure on Wall Street, some deal will happen soon.
腾讯曾经和谷歌及Facebook举行过合资经营的会谈，也向硅谷的一些规模稍小的企业投出橄榄枝表达收购意向，但都无果而终。但这个投资者对华尔街的压力和他在香港股票交易市场的压力一样大的话，说不准这单事情就成了。
Tencent’s stock has more than doubled in the last year, and it has a P/E ratio more than six times Google’s, according to Yahoo Finance. You think Apple’s stock has appreciated in recent years? Check this out. Tencent has had more than double the stock appreciation of Apple over the last five years, according to Yahoo Finance. Investors itch for a company like that to go do something with that rich of a stock currency.
依据雅虎金融的数据，腾讯的股票在去年一年增长了一倍多，其价格收益比率是谷歌的六倍还多， 你觉得这几年苹果的股票升值了？查一下吧，比起腾讯这是小巫见大巫，雅虎金融数据显示，过去五年里，腾讯的股票升值两倍于苹果。投资者看见这么一家公司能够如此赚钱，都希望手里攥着他的股票不松手。
Even if you don’t know the name Tencent, you’ve probably heard of its core IM product QQ. Tencent started in instant messaging in 1999 and unlike nearly everyone else, figured out a way to make money from it by selling virtual goods and services to enhance your avatar. Today, the bulk of its revenue comes from online games, with meaningful amounts also coming from virtual goods sold over its social network QZone and ads over its QQ.com portal and search property.
即使你不知道腾讯，你也许应该知道他的即时通讯核心品牌——QQ。腾讯从1999年起进军即时通讯行业，与其他即时通讯软件不同，他开辟了通过出售增强QQ形象的虚拟商品和服务来赚钱的先河。现在，虽然腾讯的效益大头来自于网络游戏，但通过社交网络Qzone出售虚拟商品、腾讯门户QQ.com广告以及的搜索引擎收入仍然相当可观。
Tencent has also made forays in online payments and ecommerce, but it has had the least success in that category. The company isn’t giving up. I met with Tencent’s CTO Jeff Xiong in Hong Kong last week and when I asked him what the company’s core strength was, he answered “patience.”
腾讯在在线支付和电子商务领域也想异军突起，但在这一方面他做的似乎并不成功。但他们仍不放弃，我上周在香港遇见过腾讯CTO熊明华，问起他腾讯的核心力量是什么，他回答说“是耐心”。
Tencent has benefited from some luck and market timing, like most Web giants. In 2005, there was a big debate within the company over whether they should develop its own search technology or partner with someone. It did both—partnering with Google but developing its own at the same time. Last September the company replaced Google’s search with its own product, in November it replaced Google’s search ad platform with its own and in February it replaced its mobile search with its own. Google started its feud with the Chinese government in March. “We were lucky,” Xiong says. “If three years ago we hadn’t made that decision, we would have been trapped.” Tencent is a small player in search now, but in a market feeling the pain of that Baidu monopoly, many people welcome Tencent getting stronger.
和其他网络巨擘一样，腾讯依靠选择投资时机和运气获得了很多利益。在2005年，腾讯内部辩论公司是应该自主研发搜索引擎技术还是与其他公司合作。他最终选择的两手准备，一面和谷歌合作研制，一手自主研发生产自己的产品，在当年11月自己的产品取代了谷歌运行于QQ平台之上，第二年2月，他们自己的产品成功进军手机搜索市场取代曾经使用的谷歌。而3月，谷歌就和中国政府闹别扭。“我们手气不错”，熊明华说，“如果我们三年前没那么下决心，我们就被套牢了。”中国的搜索引擎市场一直被百度垄断，但很多人认为腾讯会越来越强。
Then again, many others don’t want the company getting any stronger in anything. Tencent uses its near-ubiquitous QQ messaging platform to push users to its other properties, skirting the existing problem in China of sky high prices for keywords and directory listings. Having almost zero user acquisition cost is a formidable advantage. (When it’s used wisely that is. Tencent pushed users to its ecommerce marketplace prematurely, and it just convinced a lot of users to stick with Alibaba’s Taobao.)
很多人并不希望腾讯什么都要强，腾讯利用他那近乎无所不在QQ通讯平台顺水推舟将其用户引导使用他的其他服务，成功绕开中国现在天价的密钥和目录列表问题。用户不需钱就可以得到服务的策略是腾讯非常强大的优点(腾讯这点非常明智，他将用户提早推向QQ属下的电子商务市场，很大程度上挖了阿里巴巴的淘宝网的墙角)。
Indeed, nearly every startup I spoke with in China was more scared of Tencent getting into their markets than anyone else—the way people in the Valley used to fear Microsoft.
的确，我每次所谈起的新成立的公司都不怕别人，只害怕腾讯进军他们的市场领域——过去硅谷的公司也是这样忌惮微软。
“We’re not doing everything,” protests Xiong, a former Microsoft employee during the anti-trust trial years, who is visibly uncomfortable with the Microsoft analogy. For instance, after big in-house debates Tencent has decided to stay away from business software or a Chinese equivalent of Google Docs, he says. It is making small or no bets on categories like online video, a traditional ecommerce store like Amazon, a reservation engine like OpenTable or Digg-style news aggregation. (Despite Xiong’s protestations, that’s a pretty small slice of the consumer Web the company is not going after.)
”我们并不是什么都做的，“熊反驳说，在反微软垄断的时代，他还曾经在微软任职，看得出，他不愿意人们把腾讯和微软作比较。比如，腾讯内部讨论决定不开发商业软件或者相当于谷歌文档的东西，他说。腾讯在类似于在线视频，像亚马逊之类的传统电子商店像OpenTable的酒店预订系统抑或Digg-style之类的新闻搜集系统投资很少(尽管熊如此反驳，腾讯真正没有涉足的消费者网络领域只剩可怜的一点点)。
I asked Xiong where he expected Tencent to be in ten years. He responded first by saying China only has about 20% Internet penetration. Just growing in China in one of the company’s verticals would grow Tencent dramatically– that’s no doubt driving the stock up. I asked him if he thought Tencent would buy a big Silicon Valley company in the future. He said yes, without blinking. (The company has an office on University Avenue, and Xiong travels here several times a year.)
我问熊他所预见的腾讯十年后会是什么样子，他回答说中国市场开发了仅仅20%，仅仅在中国市场，腾讯就可以近乎垂直向上的发展，而股票毫无疑问的会上涨。我问他是否会考虑将来在硅谷收购一家大公司，他说会的，眼都不眨很干脆。(腾讯在大学大道有自己的办公室，熊每年都会去几次。)
Tencent is an impressive company, but it’s fair to say the stock is over-heated. It should do something with that currency while it can, the way Google used its enviable stock currency to outbid rivals for acquisitions like YouTube back in 2006. Every Internet company can tell you, that advantage doesn’t last forever.
腾讯现在的表现给人深刻印象，但不得不说，他的股票过热了。腾讯应该在他还能做点什么挽救他的那些钱的时候及时动手，像谷歌在2006年用他那炙手可热的股票以高于竞争对手的价格收购YouTube一样。每个因特网公司都会告诉你，没有永久的优势。
Indeed, it’s hard to think of an Internet company Tencent’s size that hasn’t done a big, even company changing deal. EBay changed its fortunes with PayPal (and several bad acquisitions unfortunately), Yahoo got into search with Overture, and Google expanded its business with YouTube and DoubleClick. Even Amazon added to its ecommerce arsenal with its recent acquisition of Zappos.
事实上，很难想象，一个像腾讯这麽大的因特网公司从来没有和其他公司交换股票，ebay和Paypal交换过股票(同时也有几宗不成功的买卖)，雅虎插手Overtrue，谷歌也向YouTube和DoubleClick拓展了业务，甚至亚马逊也把自己电子商务的炮筒伸向他最近收购的Zappos.
Still, odds are any near-term deals will be modest ones. Pony Ma, Tencent’s founder and CEO, has walked away from large acquisitions in the past because of concerns that the culture’s wouldn’t mix, Xiong says. Indeed, Tencent’s staff has an average age of 26 and has that somewhat cocky but fun feel of working for the coolest company on the planet at just the right time. (I snapped the pictures in this post during a visit to the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.)
但是，短期投资成为腾讯的折中的胜算。熊说，腾讯创始人CEO马化腾过去不参与大规模并购的原因是，他不希望腾讯的文化被污染，事实上，腾讯的员工平均年龄只有26岁，他们有些狂，也很幽默，因为他们在最正确的时间为世界上最酷的公司工作。(在腾讯深圳总部参观时，我抓拍了几张海报的照片)
Patience is one thing, but Tencent has been cautious long enough– pretty soon it’ll need to start acting like the global Internet company it is becoming.
腾讯是需要耐心，但腾讯已然足够小心了，——这只小企鹅很快就要变成小天鹅，跟全球的因特网公司齐飞共舞了。
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