Google came down to $750,000, Khosla said. Excite still said no.
Around 1999 Excite was the number two search engine, behind Yahoo. Its CEO, George Bell, remembers a call from venture investor Vinod Khosla of the firm Kleiner Perkins about a chance to invest in a new search engine.
At a TechCrunch tech conference in 2010, Khosla said Larry Page and Sergey Brin first asked for $1 million. When Bell said no, Khosla talked them down to $750,000. Bell said no again.
Bell's account adds different terms and a reason. In a 2014 interview with the Internet History Podcast he recalled $750,000 in cash plus about 1% of Excite, and a condition from Page: if the Google team came to work for Excite, Excite had to rip out its own search technology and use Google's. Bell said the difference in results was "not dramatic enough to justify the cultural risk."
In January 1999 Excite agreed a $6.7 billion stock merger with At Home Network. The merged Excite At Home filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. On 24 September 2026, Alphabet, the parent of Google, had a market value of $4.18 trillion.
One-minute true story. AI-generated illustration with narration by an AI voice.
Bell said the gain was not dramatic enough to justify the risk. What gain would your team need before replacing its own system?
What the captions say
- Google came down to $750,000, Khosla said. Excite still said no.
- Excite was then the number two search engine, behind Yahoo.
- Its boss, George Bell, says venture investor Vinod Khosla called him about a new one.
- Khosla says its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, first asked for $1 million. Bell turned down the lower price too.
- Bell recalls a condition. If they came to work for Excite, Page insisted, Excite had to rip out all its own search and use Google's.
- Bell said the difference in search results was not dramatic enough to justify that cultural risk.
- Excite merged into a new company, Excite@Home.
- In 2001 it filed for bankruptcy.
- Excite did not buy Google. On 24 September 2026 Google's parent Alphabet had a market value of $4.18 trillion.
