[hajrice]

Even if they did sell, there's a chance that they wouldn't be as successful as today. Perhaps them NOT being locked down by some control-freak VC firm is what lead to increased success ?

Back then, if I'm not mistaken, VC firms (like the one in the story) were much more "controlling" than they are today. So, in my opinion I don't think that Google would have been as successful as they are today.

[dasil003]

There's a chance? Remember, Google was years away from their breakthroughs in scalability and AdWords. Excite purchasing Google would have simply killed it before it got off the ground. Larry and Sergey just wanted a payday. They would have stuck around for the requisite 2 years or whatever and then bailed to start something else.