Page 159 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jeff Chen developed a Chinese Internet browser that makes surfing the Web as easy as
changing television channels by remote control. Even Microsoft has adopted some of its
features. With a famous Scandinavian mentor to guide him, could Chen and Maxthon be in
Google’s crosshairs?

Maxthon—
The Way China Surfs
the World

t the Kerry Centre Hotel in
A central Beijing in April 2005,
the ballroom is filled with investors
attending the annual Asian Technology
Roundtable Exhibition. They’re here
to spot the next wave of promising
private technology companies in Asia.
Software developer Jeff Chen is pre-
senting to a group eager to find uncut
diamonds that can be turned into
sparkling assets. As geeky as Bill Gates
ever was, Chen doesn’t have much stage presence. His mentor Morten Lund,
the Copenhagen investor who put Skype into orbit, had to coax Chen to pitch
for funding here. Lund even prepared the PowerPoint slides for him.
Chen ticks off the functions on his highly customizable browser: open
multiple Web pages by using tabs; perform commands such as “go back,” “go
forward,” and “refresh” with tiny gestures on the mouse; capture and save
Web pages as files; block ads; zoom in on pages; and boost speeds for
downloads. My personal favorite is an undo command to go back to a page
that was closed accidentally. Microsoft didn’t come out with similar features
for its Internet Explorer Version 7 until a year and a half later, in fall 2006.

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Copyright © 2008 by Rebecca A. Fannin. Click here for terms of use.