Acquired · Jun 29Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened
Had 8,000 advertisers by mid 1999 and made $100 million in its first year, but never patented its ideas after showing them at TED. Its board refused to buy Google for $200 million, Yahoo bought it for $1.6 billion, and Google later paid it $360 million over patents.
Tips
- Google put click-through rate into ad ranking, creating Ad Rank▶ 2:08:25Overture had the same idea but dropped it because it confused advertisers and broke their transparent price list.
- Larry and Sergey adopted Overture's pay-per-click auction rather than insist on inventing it▶ 2:04:34GoTo had 8,000 advertisers by mid 1999, while Google's AdWords beta launched in October 2000 with 350.
- Overture's board refused to buy Google for $200 million and gave up the market▶ 2:03:15Yahoo later paid $1.6 billion for Overture, and Google paid it $360 million for patent infringement.
