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When CEOs Reject Good Offers That May Have Come from Nobodies: The Case of Google and Excite

Excite CEO throws out Google from the door. Click on image for larger view

CEOs are saddled with offers everyday. But it appears that when looking at these offers, especially unsolicited offers, the CEOs tend not to look primarily at the substance of the ideas, but at the persons behind the offers. Most times also, they either not look at the offers at all or they delegate the examination of the offers to subordinates. The tendency is for the subordinates to iron out all the reasons why the “untested ideas” must be turned down. Ostensibly, they do this to protect themselves from being blamed for anything that might go wrong should the new idea be accepted and not work. Again, they must create an impression of protecting the CEO and the company. And, that has been the mistake most CEOs make.

Truly, these CEOs make important decisions everyday – mostly good decisions. But they make terribly bad decisions too. One of the worst decisions a CEO has made in modern history was made by George Bell, CEO of the one-time popular web portal Excite. The CEO turned down Larry Page's and Sergey Brim's offer to buy Google from them for a paltry $1 million. The two Google founders were, at that time, graduate students of Stanford University and they were feeling that the Google project was taking too much of their time, and that their studies were being neglected. Thereupon, they set out to sell Google and offered to George Bell, whose company Excite was the powerhouse of Internet search at that time. George Bell did not only reject the offer, but he also got into a heated discussion with one of Excite's venture capitalists, Vinod Khosla, who had negotiated a $750,000 offer with Larry Page and Sergey Brim.

Google is today, one of the most successful companies in the world and is worth nearly $200 billion while Excite is all but extinct.

CEOs ought to understand that people that have already made big names are unlikely to contact them more than “nobodies” with great ideas. Larry Page and Sergey Brim were poor university students when they came up with the idea of Google. Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Dell’s Michael Dell, RIM’s Mike Lazaridis and Apple's Steve Jobs were all “nobodies” and not even college graduates when insightful CEOs broke the norm and took on the ideas of these geniuses. 

The Great Tech War Of 2012

Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are battling for the future of the innovation economy.

Let it be known: these modern oligarchies will not last forever as they are today - especially in their various domains, as they keep trying to invade each others' territory and trying to outdo or undercut each other. 

Yet, no one should count BlackBerry out in the wireless arena. The giant has been wounded, but is not sleeping. So also, the terribly struggling T-Mobile can bounce back and win its well-deserved share of the market if its CEO Phillip Humm can find none-frontal-attack ways to reset T-Mobile's faulty brand perception. 

In the social networking arena, Facebook needs to panic. Google+ is coming. Google+ is adding some class that Facebook may not have thought about. But, I'll leave the details for another day, as the data is yet being gathered.

In all cases though, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon all need to be on guard. The tech world is very dynamic and no one knows the next big thing that is coming in 2 to 3 years or 5 years. Farhad Manjoo of Fast Company magazine puts it well: " ... despite this oncoming war, in which attacking one another becomes standard operating practice, their inevitable slide into irrelevancy likely won't be at the hands of one of their fellow rivals. As always, the real future of tech belongs to some smart-ass kid in a Palo Alto garage." 

Before the tech kid appears, I still insist, don't count BlackBerry out and Facebook needs to worry. Google+ has something coming.

BlackBerry can roar back like a wounded lion. Facebook can fall like MySpace. And Apple can fall like Yahoo!.

T-Mobile, too, can roar back. While one cannot completely disregard T-Mobile's current technical challenges, the company's greatest difficulties might owe more to erroneous public perception of the T-Mobile brand than its technological realities. CEO Philipp Humm must therefore find creative ways to reverse the faulty perception of the T-Mobile brand. 

Those that are writing off T-Mobile might be mistaken.

Back to the social networking war. Although it's going to be a daunting task for Google+, with the right technical and human strategies, it can dethrone Facebook.