This Crippling Error By Yahoo Could Have Completely Changed The Way We Use The Internet Today – SlashGear

In fact, quite a few different companies had the opportunity to snap up Google and turn their brand name into the most visited website in the world. As Interesting Engineering reports, Google began its life in 1995 as BackRub, a passion project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin intended to deliver backlinks to particular websites. Both men expected to be academics rather than businesspeople. Even after a $100,000 no-strings contribution to the Google project by Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim – a check that had to sit in a drawer for weeks because Brin and Page hadn’t established a company called “Google” yet – the programmers sought to sell rather than continue their project.

People kept turning them down. George Bell, CEO of early search engine Excite, called Brin and Page’s $1 million price “preposterous. Investment banker David Cowan of Bessemer Investments also turned down Brin and Page. But Yahoo was the biggest rejection.