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Excite CEO: Why Excite didn't buy Google (2014) [audio]
- pbreit 7y agoWith stories like these, I'm not always convinced that the acquirer really had a viable offer on the table.
- dang 7y agoRelated from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821236 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740871
- threeseed 7y agoPeople forget that had Google been acquired it's not like we would still have the same site today. The main reason it was successful back in the day was because it was fast, clean and had no ads. Any company that acquired them would sort those out pretty quick.
- makapuf 7y agoI remember I and many others starting to use them for exactly that. Look at this comparison (not that early is starts at 2004 while google iirc started to see usage at 2001) http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/google_vs_yahoo.jpg http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/goo... Some other search engines were even more heavy handed on advertising.
- madiathomas 7y ago"Fast, clean and no ads" was a big deal for me. Internet was very slow when I starting using it. When I discovered Google, it was a breath of fresh air to my life. For a change I was using a search engine that loaded fast.
- onion2k 7y agoI've come around to the idea that the old 'directory style' search engines is a feature that I'd quite like to see again. If a search engine is only available as a search listing then you're entirely at the mercy of the algorithm. With a human-curated directory of links there's some checking going on, and it's much harder for someone to game their way to the top of the listings.
- cosmodisk 7y agoSuch a directory would still face similar problems Google has to deal with on daily basis.Popular!= Good or reliable and etc.
- simonh 7y agoWith a pure search system, you can endlessly tweak your results to precisely what you need in any obscure topic space using search terms. With a human curated directory, you will instead find that whatever terms you add, you always get dumped back into the same box of hand built pages of results. Once you’ve mined those out, this will get really frustrating.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoA blend of the two approaches would be useful. Expose the internal topic classifications and let searchers manipulate them to narrow or widen the search space.
- tinus_hn 7y agoDon’t forget that Pagerank, the ‘results must have all terms’ feature and the very large index made for significantly better results that the competition had.
- simonh 7y agoRight, but the received wisdom was that the ‘winner’ of the internet race to be the number 1 portal would look more like Yahoo, Excite or AOL. A big front page with lots of content and big juicy adds. If Google had been acquired, they would simply have become the tiny little search box on the Excite front page. That could have left space for another company to develop competing search tech and beat them with a minimalist approach. Or for another heavy duty portal page site to develop competing tech. Maybe it was only Google’s radically minimalist focus that allowed their superior search tech to really stand out.
- jelling 7y agoAgreed. This is what Excite looked like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_screenshot_1997.png/220px-Excite_screenshot_1997.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_...
- dehrmann 7y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com...
- omarchowdhury 7y agoKey points: Excite's CEO passed on purchasing Google for $750K + 1% of Excite's stock because as a condition of the acquihire deal, Larry Page demanded Excite's tech stack be replaced with Google's. While the financial terms of the deal were acceptable to both parties, the deal fell apart due to Larry's request: Excite tested Google's search results against theirs and at the time found no material difference warranting such a drastic change in their business.
- gojomo 7y agoAnd if you listen beyond the highlighted range of the interview, you hear Excite's CEO Bell speaking of how most of his attention was on the @Home side of the business, managing difficult relationships with his cable-company owners/partners. That reveals, I think, the actual error in Excite's strategy: not realizing that "internet search" was the real prize deserving all the attention. That mis-prioritization is what led to accepting the merger with @Home just a little before these Google discussions. That's also why they mainly evaluated Google on some static set of then-common queries. That's why they were satisfied with their existing search results – which by my recollection, were for a while the clearly "most relevant" of then-extant options. Their tech stack & team had been quite good, and certainly seemed "good enough" as just one small part of the particular larger game they thought they were playing. Had Excite accepted Page's requirement, the tech/team switchover might've been rocky, and I suspect at best Excite would've remained relevant in search for only a little while longer. But the same distractions & headwinds that bankrupted Excite@Home by the end of 2001 likely would've felled the company even with the addition of Google's nascent potential. Google's best talent, including Page & Brin, wouldn't have stayed around for long. (And in the actual history of an independent Google, it still raised tens-of-millions in additional venture investment to give them the time/resources to perfect their model – runway that might not have been available inside Excite.) It was the earlier choice to emphasize the "last mile" cable-internet business and monthly subscription revenues, via the merger with @Home, that sealed Excite's fate. It nudged them away from buying Google, sure, but also put them on a path where even buying Google couldn't have saved them.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
- chirau 7y agoA lot of people want to judge investors who passed on Google. They shouldn't. In VC you hit or miss, you win some you lose some. People judge investors who passed saying it was a "poor" decision. That's only because you have hindsight and hindsight is 20/20. I am sure there were many other search plays at the time and picking from one was just like picking a crab from a barrel. I doubt investors, who do this everyday and win some and lose some, worry all the time about why they passed on Google.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI agree with the general sentiment of your post, and luck is definitely a factor. But investors ultimately care about ROI, and if you didn't invest in Google before the dot com bust then there's a very good chance your entire fund failed. > I doubt investors, who do this everyday and win some and lose some, worry all the time about why they passed on Google. A very famous investor once said to me "you either invested in Google or you lost money."
- omarchowdhury 7y ago> But investors ultimately care about ROI, and if you didn't invest in Google before the dot com bust then there's a very good chance your entire fund failed. Google is up 4000% since its 2004 IPO and 1000% from local bottom during the housing bubble crash. Didn't even need to be a VC to get access to VC level gains buying GOOG.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI guess I should have specified VC investors (we are talking about tech startups).
- spaceflunky 7y ago>Didn't even need to be a VC to get access to VC level gains buying GOOG. That's a great point. Anyone who shits on a VC for not investing in Google ought to be asked how much Google stock they bought in 2004. 4000% gains is better than most VC get on even the best exits and that opportunity was open to EVERYONE.
- partingshots 7y agoGoogle would 100% have failed without its original founders, Brin and Page, running the company in its early years. I’m very glad they weren’t acquired.
- sundvor 7y agoAgree with the first part, not so sure about the second.
- yccheok 7y agoDon't forget Eric as well. He is one of the trio, who turns Google into what it is today.
- vezycash 7y agoEric's contribution to Google was paranoia and urgency from his bitter experiences losing twice to Microsoft. He knew Microsoft would come after them. So, they to widen the gap so far that when the "sleeping giant" woke up, it wouldn't be able to overtake and crush em.
- SomewhatLikely 7y agoLikely they would have seen differences if they had compared on long tail queries instead of common queries. With the growth in search usage at the time the diversity of searches was only going up.
- rasz 7y agoSteven Levy: "they tested was “Internet.” According to Hassan, Excite’s first results were Chinese web pages where the English word “Internet” stood out among a jumble of Chinese characters. Then the team typed “Internet” into BackRub. The first two results delivered pages that told you how to use browsers. It was exactly the kind of helpful result that would most likely satisfy someone who made the query. Bell was visibly upset. The Stanford product was too good. If Excite were to host a search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, he explained, the users would leave the site instantly. Since his ad revenue came from people staying on the site—“stickiness” was the most desired metric in websites at the time—using BackRub’s technology would be counterproductive."
- wenbin 7y agoJust curious - when did you start using Google regularly? For me, it was after the year 2000, two years after Google was incorporated.
- zmix 7y agoIt must have been before that. I was on AmigaOS, during the 90's, and there was a (commercial) web browser named "Voyager", which came with Google as homepage/search pre-installed.
- tiborsaas 7y agoThat's a good question. I remember using Yahoo and AltaVista a lot in high school. In college I'm 100% sure I used Google all the time which dates back around 2002/3. Switched to Gmail in 2005.
- jnwatson 7y agoI started using it in ‘99 or so. I distinctly remember using it over WAP in 2000 with my first cell phone. Having Google access via mobile in 2000 was living in the future. Folks would treat me like an oracle.
- cosmodisk 7y agoI was quite young at the time with very limited access to the internet.Google was the first search engine I used and it was just starting.A couple of months later I 'discovered' Yahoo.Went on their site and I was like wtf..I think I visited Yahoo less than 10 times since then..
- mikepurvis 7y agoAround 2000. Initially via the Dogpile meta search engine, but after a while it became apparent that all the best results were coming in via Google anyway, so went right to the source.
- dec0dedab0de 7y agoWhenever the Yahoo homepage became a mess. Somewhere from 99-01
- 7y ago
- adim86 7y agoI always find stories like this fascinating. It always reminds me of how fragile our futures are. If Google was acquired the internet will be a VERY different place today. I find it humourous because this kinda brings to mind Skynet from the Terminator. In the movies, they spend a lot of time sending killing machines to the past to take out people who would invent the future and it causes a great deal of chaos, while all they might need to do is add a clause in a merger or acquisition that botches a deal that prevents Skynet from existing and the mission is accomplished. LOL
- Jestar342 7y agoInstead of killing machines, the terminators would be lawyers. That could be a very interesting plot. "Are you Sarah Connor? ... You've been served."
- raxxorrax 7y ago> That could be a very interesting plot. No, it would involve lawyers.
- ralfd 7y agoTerminator lawyers!
- martin-adams 7y agoLitigator 2: Judgement Day
- Kye 7y agoMy Cousin Vinny would have looked a lot different if Joe Pesci's character was a terminator.
- Izkata 7y agoIn The Sarah Connor Chronicles, one Terminator accidentally time traveled decades too far into the past, its arrival tweaking the timeline such that the person it was supposed to assassinate wouldn't be at the venue he was supposed to be. The terminator became a businessman and built a construction company, just to build the building where the assassination was to take place. According to records found, it was loved by its workers, since it cared more about getting the job done than about profits, and would regularly work alongside them. So yeah, the idea doesn't need a lot of tweaking for a lawyer terminator to exist. They already do whatever they need to for their goal, they aren't just killing machines.
- vanesadawson 7y agoNice. Is that happen ?
- sytelus 7y agoAccording to Steven Levy, Excite CEO was visibly upset when Google won better result in “search backoff”. Now he says he didn’t saw difference. Much better coverage is here: http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/11/the-real-reason-excite-turned-down-buying-google-for-750000-in-1999/ http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/11/the-real-reaso...
- geophile 7y agoLet’s not forget that Bell also decided to spend $780M on an e-greeting card company. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/803111/1/excitehome-buys-blue-mountain-arts-web-site-for-780-million.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/803... I mean, if he had flipped a coin on each decision, his expected outcome would Have been higher.
- sct202 7y agoIf Google had been bought by them, the would have been starved to death for resources from the messy merger with @Home.
- paulus_magnus2 7y agoThere are more interesting questions: - what if Excite bought Google and killed it. And kept buying all competitors before they become a threat .... like Google does these days. - following from there: which companies have been bought and killed off so that the future we could have had was sacrificed on the altar of existing companies defending their own turf. - following even more: Which innovation are we not seeing because the huge business model desert created by the dominant advertising model (which now turned into surveillance model).
- nkkollaw 7y agoI love it. When you visit Excite, there's a message saying they're redesigning their site: http://www.excite.com/ http://www.excite.com/. When do you ever need to do that, rather than doing the redesign and then publishing it whenever it's ready..?