Of all of the bargains in the history of tech, this might have been the best. And it was passsed on.
The story goes: In 1999, Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures (and eventual partner at Kleiner Perkins) got Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to agree to sell the company to Excite for $1 million. Excite’s George Bell wasn’t interested.
After Excite CEO George Bell rejected Page and Brin’s $1 million price for Google (GOOG), Khosla talked the duo down to $750,000. But Bell still rejected that.
That $750,000 would be worth $170 billion today (though how valuable Google would be as part of Excite is questionable).
The world, and certainly Larry and Sergey, are certainly better off that Google kept its independence.Excite got sold to AskJeeves which is now a small insignificant part of IAC (IAC).