The red countdown timer in the center of the screen had only sixty seconds remaining.
The curves on the network traffic monitoring charts remained relatively flat.
This was merely the calm before the storm.
"Load balancer status: normal," the Technical Director reported, his eyes glued to the row of monitors before him. "Backup server clusters are online and on standby. Bandwidth redundancy has been reserved at 300%. As long as we don't hit a massive DDoS attack, we can handle any conventional volume of concurrent requests."
Frank took a sip of his bitter coffee.
Takuya Nakayama's strategy had been clear: use the free email service and suspense marketing to drive all of America's internet users onto this single landing page.
They had agreed to the plan and had witnessed the Internet's growing attention over the past few days.
The hardware costs had been meticulously calculated during the project's planning phase. Now, the true test was Silicon Valley Online's capacity to handle the load.
Ten.
Five.
Three.
Two.
One.
The numbers on the screen hit zero.
In an office building in the San Francisco Bay Area, Richard sat at his desk, his palm sweating against the mouse.
The "G0" page—white text on a black background—automatically refreshed. In place of the countdown, a black-and-white "Refresh" button appeared.
He clicked it instantly.
The progress bar at the top of the browser stuttered for less than half a second before instantly filling up.
A whole new world unfolded before his eyes.
There were no long-winded, complicated welcome messages. At the very top of the page was a clean search bar, flanked by a row of jump buttons for the Webdir directory.
Looking down, the entire page was scientifically divided into multiple rectangular blocks. The headlines for News, Finance, Sports, and Entertainment were highlighted in bold, dark blue text, each accompanied by a brief summary.
The most eye-catching feature was a GG banner spanning the middle of the page:
"Register for G0 Mail and get 2MB of free storage space instantly. The first 1,000 users to register will be upgraded to 4MB for free. Tiered storage plans and enterprise-grade anti-theft backup services are also available."
Richard didn't even glance at the headlines. He clicked the registration link directly. He was sick and tired of his company's crappy 500KB mailbox that was always full.
The form was extremely streamlined.
Set username, enter password, click submit.
The page redirected.
"Congratulations, you are the 412th G0 Mail user. Your exclusive 4MB space has been activated."
Richard leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh of relief.
Done.
Only then did he switch back to the home page and casually click on a financial news story about rumors of a Federal Reserve rate cut.
The layout was clean, and the page loaded lightning-fast.
At the same time, in a computer lab at UC Berkeley, Eric and his roommate were each at a computer. Both their screens were frozen on the G0 Mail registration success page.
"Number 890," Eric said, glancing at his roommate's screen. "You almost missed the last train for the 4MB space."
"Netscape lagged for a second," his roommate complained, then clicked the ICQ web login link in the top right corner of the page. "Look at this. They've integrated the ICQ and BBS accounts."
Eric leaned in to look.
After entering the username and password he'd just registered for his email, the system immediately prompted him to authorize the ICQ web login. Not only that, but when he clicked into the Silicon Valley Online BBS technical forum, his username was already displayed in the top right corner.
A Passport System.
One set of credentials, seamless access across the entire ecosystem.
"These guys tore down the walls of the Internet and built their own supercity in its place," Eric remarked.
As a developer, he knew all too well how high the technical barriers were for this kind of underlying data integration.
This required immense architectural prowess and server response speed.
Redwood City Operations Center.
Three minutes after the countdown hit zero, the traffic curve on the large screen shot upward vertically.
"Concurrent requests have surpassed 100,000!" the Technical Director shouted, his voice an octave higher. "Web server cluster load has reached 60%."
Frank set down his coffee cup.
"Requests to the mailbox registration interface are skyrocketing. The first 1,000 slots for 4MB of storage were snatched up in forty-five seconds. Now, we're gaining two hundred new registered users every second."
"Database write latency is within the safe range. The load balancing mechanism has kicked in, and traffic is being distributed to backup nodes."
The noise from the server rack fans grew louder.
Hot air blasted from the vents, clashing with the air conditioning.
The hardware foundation that Silicon Valley Online had invested heavily in was now proving decisive.
There were no crashes, no 502 errors.
Page response times remained consistently under two seconds.
The users' browsing habits had been precisely anticipated.
Those who had secured their mailbox slots didn't leave. Instead, they followed the category sections into areas that interested them.
Some were checking last night's NBA scores, some were browsing Nasdaq pre-market analysis, and others were using the search bar to find the information they needed.
Every click, every page jump, was converted into ever-increasing numbers in the backend.
New York, Manhattan.
On the electronic screen of the Nasdaq Trading Floor, the green numbers next to the SVOL ticker were ticking upward.
Donald Valentine sat in his office at Sequoia Capital, holding a freshly printed internal briefing.
Within half an hour of go.com going live, its unique IP visits had surpassed 500,000.
The phone on his desk rang.
"Donald, that monster you invested in has gone crazy." The voice on the other end belonged to a manager at a major Wall Street hedge fund. "My trader tried out the site before the opening bell. He said it's the most intuitive Internet product he's ever used. Everything they want is right there—no more memorizing those damn long URLs."
"That's the value of a portal," Donald said, his voice steady.
"We're ready to sweep the market. How much of the float is still available?"
"You can try your luck on the open market," Donald said, hanging up the phone.
He knew all too well that few people would be willing to sell their Silicon Valley Online shares today.
As the stock market opened at 9:30 AM Eastern Time, Silicon Valley Online's stock price gapped up. The anticipation built up by the earlier suspense marketing campaign had, at the moment the product officially launched and delivered an exceptional user experience, completely transformed into a frenzy in the capital markets.
Buy orders flooded in.
Trading volume surged.
Institutional investors who had been waiting on the sidelines, after confirming that go.com had not repeated the joke of early Internet startups crashing immediately upon launch, threw their capital into the fray without a second thought.
By 11:00 AM, Silicon Valley Online's stock price broke through $22.
In Redwood City.
Frank looked at the latest report handed to him by the Technical Director.
All the data had stabilized. The shockwave from the early morning peak had passed; what followed was a steady influx of traffic.
"What's the total number of clicks?" Frank asked.
"Ninety-eight million," the Technical Director said, glancing at the real-time counter on the screen. "And it's still increasing at a rate of two million per minute."
"..."
Please Support me by becoming my Patreon member and get 30+ chapters.
[email protected]/Ajal69
change @ with a
Thank You to Those who joined my Patreon