“Over the course of the next 18 months, the young inventors gave demonstrations of Google to nearly every search company in the Valley, from Yahoo to Infoseek. They also showed their technology to several venture capitalists. Everyone found their technology interesting, but each sent the grad students on their way. "I told them to go pound sand" recalled Steve Kirsch, founder of the now defunct portal Infoseek. 1997 Google offered to sell itself for $1.6 million; Excite was willing to offer $750K”
