Two Kids Begged Yahoo to Buy their Website

Think about the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. Now multiply that by a Trillion.

In 1998, two college students walked into Yahoo’s headquarters with an idea that would change the internet forever.

Those kids? Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Founders of Google.

Yahoo’s response?

“Get out. We don’t need it.”

That’s right: Yahoo could have owned Google for less than a house in Silicon Valley. Instead. they showed Larry & Sergey the door.

But here’s the funniest part..

Their little project wasn’t even called Google yet. It was called “BackRub” - because it analyzed “backlinks” to determine a websites’s importance.

Yahoo thought the name was as ridiculous as the technology. But they missed something huge. Page and Brin had invented PageRank: A revolutionary algorithm that ranked websites based on how many other sites linked to them.

It was like counting votes - if lots of websites linked to you, you must be important. Simple, but genius. But Yahoo just couldn’t see it…

“Search isn’t important. We’re a web portal.”

They were so focused on being a ‘media company’ that they completely missed the future of the internet.

Meanwhile, Larry & Sergey kept working on their “little project”. And by 2002, Yahoo realized their mistake and they offered $3 billion to buy Google. But it was too late as Page & Brin wanted $5 billion. Yahoo’s CEO Terry Semel refused.

Another historic mistake that would cost them everything. And while Yahoo was busy buying failing companies like GeoCities and Broadcast, Google was quietly building an empire with AdWords. They knew search wasn’t just a tool but a gateway to the internet.

And word was starting to spread.

In 2008, Microsoft offered Yahoo $44.6 billion to compete. Yahoo’s response?

“We want more.”

Today:

• Yahoo sold to Verizon for just $4.48 billion.

• Google makes more in 3 days than Yahoo made in its best year.

All because Yahoo couldn’t see the potential in a “simple search engine.”

Key Takeaways:

• Innovation doesn’t look impressive at first.

• The next big thing often seems worthless to most people.

• That’s exactly why it’s valuable; because others don’t see it.

Can YOU do it?

Today, Google processes:
- 3.5 billion searches per day.
- 1.2 trillion searches per year.
- 40,000 searches every second.

All because two students refused to give up when everyone said their idea was worthless.

Can you do it?

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