Back in 1998, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who were unknown to the technology company offered to sell their little startup to AltaVista for $1 million to Yahoo so they can resume their studies at Stanford.
The company that Page and Brin were looking to sell was the soon-to-be patented PageRank system and represents the core of Google (Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL))’s existence.
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AltaVista turned down the offer to acquire the company. Similarly, Yahoo wanted its users to spend more time on its own platform, contrasting PageRank, which sends a user to the most relevant web site.
In 2002, Yahoo had another opportunity to acquire Google, the CEO at the time, Terry Semel, engaged in negotiations to acquire Google, which lasted several months.
The outcome of the negotiation was Semel balking at Google’s price tag of $5 billion.
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Today, Google and its parent company Alphabet boast a market capitalization of more than $1 Trillion.