Terry Semel (Yahoo CEO) says he missed the opportunity to buy Google

In a talk with The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta as part of a Newhouse School lecture series, Semel was asked what his dumbest decision was after taking the job at the Net media company in 2001.

Shortly after joining Yahoo, Semel said, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo suggested he look at buying up-and-comer Google, whose Stanford grad founders looked up Yahoo's inventors. So Semel said he had dinner with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them what their business was with Yahoo paying only $7 million annually as its biggest licensor of Google search technology.

"They had no thought process on the subject," Semel said.

So Semel nevertheless asked to buy Google. They replied that they wanted $1 billion and didn't want to sell. Semel said he'd think about the price.

Another dinner and Semel agreed to the $1 billion. Larry and Sergey replied that they wanted $3 billion and didn't want to sell. "I couldn't and didn't buy this company and the rest is history," Semel said

Check the full Video here

Comments

My Wedding Anniversary :)

Six years back on the same day I married Sai Lakshmi (12-July-2000). I know Sai for almost 13 years now :) I fell in love with her during my 12th standard. I know @ 17 yrs any person wouldn't be matured enough to make a big decision like this. But thank God my choice was perfect :) Even now, very often we used to think about the past and laugh at our behaviors/actions then. My love story would be really interesting (at least for me and Sai :)) and I am sure none of you guys would be interested in reading about it so lemme not get into it in-depth. But one thing which I want to share is "Without Sai, I wouldn't have entered into the IT field at all". She was instrumental in convincing me to study my Master's degree in Computer Application. That's the move that changed my career. Till my schooling, my dream was to either become a "big" sportsman (Cricket and Badminton were my favorites at that time.) or an Aeronautics engineer. Unfortunately, my l...

Script table as - ALTER TO is greyed out - SQL SERVER

One of my office colleague recently asked me why we are not able to generate ALTER Table script from SSMS. If we right click on the table and choose "Script Table As" ALTER To option would be disabled or Greyed out. Is it a bug? No it isn't a bug. ALTER To is there to be used for generating modified script of Stored Procedure, Functions, Views, Triggers etc., and NOT for Tables. For generating ALTER Table script there is an work around. Right click on the table, choose "Modify" and enter into the design mode. Make what ever changes you want to make and WITHOUT saving it right click anywhere on the top half of the window (above Column properties) and choose "Generate Change Script". Please be advised that SQL Server would drop actually create a new table with modifications, move the data from the old table into it and then drop the old table. Sounds simple but assume you have a very large table for which you want to do this! Then it woul...

What should one look @ while buying a land in chennai?

Offlate people have started thinking about investing their money in lands. I too think that to be a wise decision only! As most of us know buying a land in chennai (for that matter any where in the world) isn't an easy affair. I was just wondering what all one needs to look at before deciding to purchase a land. I thought I would put down what ever I know about this subject here. [Guys pls free to correct me if I my understanding is wrong somewhere. That way, it would help me understand as well as others who might read this in future]. Here we go ... 1. One should not buy farm lands if they want to build a residential house sometime later there. Because to my knowledge its illegal to build residential houses on lands meant for irrigation. 2. Encumberance Certificate -- This is what is shortly refered as "EC". One needs to get an EC from local sub registrar office (i guess we need pay a small amount for this). From this we / our lawyers :) can find out whether the guy who ...

Vadivel's blog

Search This Blog