Stories like this always annoy me, because they seem to imply that Google had some special intrinsic value at the time that was worth more than $1m. The Google that we've all been using for the last decade did not exist when this went down, and there's a possibility that the Google that Excite turned down really wasn't worth $1m at the time. The fact that it went on to grow (ie change) over the next decade into a $165b company doesn't imply anything about its worth in 1999.
EDIT: Although, I bet that scooping up the founders would have made it worth it, though their willingness to sell for $750k makes me wonder if they were the visionaries then that they appear to be now.
Funny, in contrast I almost always appreciate seeing stories like this, if only because they're good reminders of attribution bias.
Many of the startup entrepreneurs I know spend an unfortunate amount of emotional energy beating up on themselves for not having created Facebook/Twitter/name-your-favorite-uber-success-story here.
It's good to be regularly reminded that smarts and incredible work ethic are necessary but not sufficient for that kind of epic-level startup success.
their willingness to sell for $750k makes me wonder if they were the visionaries then that they appear to be now.
Or perhaps they had more than one idea, and selling a preliminary collection of search algorithms to reduce personal financial pressure made sense to them given the high-risk nature of the market they were playing in.
Who cares? Google 1999 was not what Google 2010 is. Google 1999 was a slight improvement (yet to be seen) on what Excite had built search engine-wise but not what Excite was portal-wise. Look at their history: http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
You can see this occurred before the $25m round of financing which Kleiner Perkins was a part of. So at the time it was a money losing PC-Magazine declared "search engine of choice" operating out of a garage competing in a space with Excite, Yahoo, Altavista, and many others. Google was not a business, really, until October 2000 with the launch of the incredibly successful adwords. Prior to that search was a money losing venture.
They may not have had revenue in 1999 but they were by far the best search engine. Prior to discovering them I was using altavista, lycos, and when really frustrated, a random 3rd search engine. I quickly switched to exclusive google use within a very short time of finding the service. This was a company to be excited about because they were miles ahead of the entrenched competition.
If excite didn't see value in them it's because they were too busy pushing their portal garbage (along with everyone else).
Even if they did sell, there's a chance that they wouldn't be as successful as today. Perhaps them NOT being locked down by some control-freak VC firm is what lead to increased success ?
Back then, if I'm not mistaken, VC firms (like the one in the story) were much more "controlling" than they are today. So, in my opinion I don't think that Google would have been as successful as they are today.
There's a chance? Remember, Google was years away from their breakthroughs in scalability and AdWords. Excite purchasing Google would have simply killed it before it got off the ground. Larry and Sergey just wanted a payday. They would have stuck around for the requisite 2 years or whatever and then bailed to start something else.
It would have been funny for the Google guys to send George Bell a really nice bottle of wine on the Google IPO date with a note that said "Thanks George...we couldn't have done it without you."
What's also interesting to think of is all the other potential multi-billion dollar businesses that do not exist today because of early acquisitions? Delicious? We sold Auctomatic at a time when building on the ebay platform and ecommerce generally was seen as 'dirty' (this was 2007-2008), I often wonder what we could have made of it if we'd stuck with it.
An example of Excite's bad business judgment that matches its bad search ranking algorithms of the time.
After edit: not knowing what has motivated the downvotes, I'll note for the record that I was an active researcher on the Web at the time, and right from the beginning it was noticeable that Google returned much better search results than Excite did. Excite had some rules about ranking search results that actively penalized pages with relevant content compiled by page authors who weren't spamming. And despite efforts not to be subject to spamming (Excite was not the worst available choice at the time, and was once one of my top-three search engines), Excite could be fooled by spammers. As soon as Google came on the scene, a lot of serious researchers rapidly abandoned Excite, and Excite certainly suffered from a precipitous drop-off in favorable word of mouth from general consumers once Google was on the scene.
My guess is that they were a bit stressed out that they weren't really hitting jackpot at the time, especially as they are today. It was early 1999, they didn't really have that many good income sources at that moment(if I'm not mistaken, they didn't even have Adsense launched back then).
They went to these guys wanting to cash out and probably lay low for a year or two ... after which I'm sure they'd be back on their feet with something new.
Well Google truly is a garage story. Google the search engine existed before Google the company. If my memory servers me correctly there new found success caught them off guard, it happened faster than they expected. They had to incorporate and scramble for funds just to keep up with the volume that was increasing day by day. I would imagine that a sale would net them the infrastructure they desperately needed.
What would be really interesting would be to know why they wanted to sell. Did they not see much future in it? Were they simply tired of working on it, after several years in grad school?
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: Although, I bet that scooping up the founders would have made it worth it, though their willingness to sell for $750k makes me wonder if they were the visionaries then that they appear to be now.
[+] [-] auxbuss|15 years ago|reply
Reminds me of a friend of mine when we were younger. When asked what he did, he replied, "I'm a rock start. But nobody knows it yet".
[+] [-] tapp|15 years ago|reply
Many of the startup entrepreneurs I know spend an unfortunate amount of emotional energy beating up on themselves for not having created Facebook/Twitter/name-your-favorite-uber-success-story here.
It's good to be regularly reminded that smarts and incredible work ethic are necessary but not sufficient for that kind of epic-level startup success.
[+] [-] geophile|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bapadna|15 years ago|reply
Or perhaps they had more than one idea, and selling a preliminary collection of search algorithms to reduce personal financial pressure made sense to them given the high-risk nature of the market they were playing in.
[+] [-] willheim|15 years ago|reply
You can see this occurred before the $25m round of financing which Kleiner Perkins was a part of. So at the time it was a money losing PC-Magazine declared "search engine of choice" operating out of a garage competing in a space with Excite, Yahoo, Altavista, and many others. Google was not a business, really, until October 2000 with the launch of the incredibly successful adwords. Prior to that search was a money losing venture.
[+] [-] redstripe|15 years ago|reply
If excite didn't see value in them it's because they were too busy pushing their portal garbage (along with everyone else).
[+] [-] hajrice|15 years ago|reply
Back then, if I'm not mistaken, VC firms (like the one in the story) were much more "controlling" than they are today. So, in my opinion I don't think that Google would have been as successful as they are today.
[+] [-] dasil003|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|15 years ago|reply
Or would this have just been mean?
[+] [-] kul|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|15 years ago|reply
After edit: not knowing what has motivated the downvotes, I'll note for the record that I was an active researcher on the Web at the time, and right from the beginning it was noticeable that Google returned much better search results than Excite did. Excite had some rules about ranking search results that actively penalized pages with relevant content compiled by page authors who weren't spamming. And despite efforts not to be subject to spamming (Excite was not the worst available choice at the time, and was once one of my top-three search engines), Excite could be fooled by spammers. As soon as Google came on the scene, a lot of serious researchers rapidly abandoned Excite, and Excite certainly suffered from a precipitous drop-off in favorable word of mouth from general consumers once Google was on the scene.
[+] [-] kloncks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hajrice|15 years ago|reply
They went to these guys wanting to cash out and probably lay low for a year or two ... after which I'm sure they'd be back on their feet with something new.
[+] [-] kls|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbird|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsmaverick|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cvg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hngryhppos|15 years ago|reply
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