Google was up for sale in 1999
Larry Page wanted to sell Google to Excite in 1999. The deal was stuck around $750,000 and 1% of Excite. But then the deal fell apart. Today Google’s Market cap is over $700 billion. There are two versions of the story around why Excite did not buy Google at that time.
As per the then Excite CEO George Bell, he rejected the deal because Larry Page insisted that Excite should replace all its search technology with Google’s search technology.
However, as per the details given by Steven Levy in his book ‘In The Plex’ George Bell was not very happy with Google’s search algorithm’s excellent performance. Bell thought Google’s relevant search results might take the users away to other websites, which means it will be harder to retain the users on their own Excite webpages.
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. —Steven Levy
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