Actually, Google was the one trying to sell itself to Excite. For $1,000,000. A board member talked the founders down to $750,000. CEO of Excite said no. It's now considered near the top of the list of worst decisions ever made by a CEO.
probably. the world only needed to decide on one search engine. it happened to be google.
after the world set (for google, thanks more for universities putting search boxes on their sites, more than algorithms) they could do absolutely anything. launch free email with 1gb? disregard ads and only allow text ads?
they did everything wrong by the book and are still huge. So i doubt excite could have screwed it up. well, they could have screwed the university fan-base... but that is about it.
Is Search _really_ so positive-returns-to-scale that only a single player can exist?
I mean, yes, Google's percentage of total Web search is embarassingly huge (north of 80%, or is it 85%, last I checked). But the user lock-in is slight.
Advertiser lock-in is where I strongly suspect the action is, where Google offers both networks and tools which appeal to online ad buyers in a fashion that's difficult or impossible to match.
I can almost guarantee you that if the deal went through then very few would know what Google is/was. Unless there was a brand change at the outcome of the deal. Even then, it wouldn't be the same.
His question was asking if Excite would have used Google's technology in such a way that they'd become what Google is today. There's no way anyone would know "Google" because Excite wasn't going to re-brand to a no-name.
Exactly. Not only that, though, was Excite capable of building the culture which Google had/has, which (I believe) is one large reason it became what it is.
