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When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

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Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#11

Post by redstripe »

willheim wrote: post #9

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 e…

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).

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#12

Post by hajrice »

kloncks wrote: post #6

I want to know why Google wanted to sell to Excite.

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.

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#15

Post by bapadna »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #10

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 $16…

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.

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#16

Post by ryanwaggoner »

bapadna wrote: post #15
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #10

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 $16…

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.

Yeah, that sounded more derogatory than I meant. I just mean they weren't as invested in the vision of Google as they appear to be now, which I think is part of their value.

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#17

Post by ryanwaggoner »

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."

Or would this have just been mean?

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#18

Post by kul »

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.

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#19

Post by auxbuss »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #10

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 $16…

You're only ever a visionary in retrospect. Make that a "confirmed visionary".

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".

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

#20

Post by kls »

auxbuss wrote: post #19
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #10

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 $16…

You're only ever a visionary in retrospect. Make that a "confirmed visionary". 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".

I tend to remember that period as search really sucked, Webcrawler, Lycos and the rest where really bad. Alta Vista was the best and it was only the leader by a thin margin.

Anyway, From the day Google hit the market, and their searches actually returning something even remotely close to what you where looking for seemed like voodoo. Google exceeded the "remotely" part by usually hitting the nail on the head. Given the fact that their algorithm was not known it was not being manipulated like people try to do today. Search results where actually better back then then they are today.

Anyway to get to the point, I don't think there where too many people that thought Google was going to be anything short of "the" search engine. At lest those at the grassroot level.

I think this is the case of a executive dismissing the technical merit of a competitors product, when the other offerings where so abominable that technical merit counted.

When things are close you can win out on branding but this was a case of the buggy companies not seeing the horseless carriage decimating their market while the guy on the street could see the advantage of the new offering clearly.

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