Reading some Google history.
Meanwhile Sergey set up a business office, and the two began calling on potential partners who might want to license a search technology better than any then available. Despite the dotcom fever of the day, they had little interest in building a company of their own around the technology they had developed. (c.1998)
Back in 1998, companies developed technology in the hopes of being acquired (the sell).
Among those they called on was friend and Yahoo! founder David Filo. Filo agreed that their technology was solid, but encouraged Larry and Sergey to grow the service themselves by starting a search engine company. “When it’s fully developed and scalable,” he told them, “let’s talk again.” Others were less interested in Google, as it was now known. One portal CEO told them, “As long as we’re 80 percent as good as our competitors, that’s good enough. Our users don’t really care about search.”
So they continued with the build. The collapse of the dotcom environment a few years later helped ensure there was no acquisition; but by then they were on their way, anyway.
Imagine how different 2008 would be if Larry and Sergey had sold.
Who’d buy today’s start-ups?
- Bandit
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