Sergey Brin

Excite passed up buying Google for $750,000 in 1999

Of all of the bargains in the history of tech, this might have been the best.  And it was passsed on.

The story goes: In 1999, Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures (and eventual partner at Kleiner Perkins) got Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to agree to sell the company to Excite for $1 million.  Excite's George Bell wasn't interested.

After Excite CEO George Bell rejected Page and Brin's $1 million price MORE

Google: The search party is over

Yes, the company is still growing at rates that would be the envy of the rest of the Fortune 500. But its core business is slowing, its stock is down, its Android mobile platform generates scant revenue, and competition (hello, Facebook) is fierce. Can Google find its footing in this brave new world?

By Michael V. Copeland with Seth Weintraub

Stroll across the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., and you are confronted MORE

What Google in China shows: It's never about shareholders

Investors (and Jack Welch) complain that Sergey Brin was acting from personal belief when he made the move. Of course he did. So does every CEO.

By Paul Smalera, contributor

Google watchers and investors are scrambling to make sense of the company's historic pullout from the Chinese market on Monday. The company's stake in technology, services and staff there likely ran into the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. But MORE

Face-off: Is Google motivated by self-interest or indignation?

Fortune contributing editor David A. Kaplan and senior editor Roger Parloff got into a spirited email debate Wednesday: When it came to pulling out of China, was Google doing no evil or simply doing what was best for business? David suspected long-term profit: "By taking the action it did ... Google enhances its standing in the American imagination." Roger didn't much care about motive: "It would be like asking if MORE

Techmate: Google vs. China

Jon and Michael debate the merits of Google (GOOG) pulling out of China over spying concerns.

Google's gutsy move

Fortune's man in Shanghai offers perspective on the online ad giant's threat to end its China venture.

By Bill Powell, Senior writer

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You get used to seeing those words pop up on your computer screen when you live in China. MORE

Eric Schmidt's hypothetical "evil room"

Imagining life at Bizarro Google.

On Wednesday morning Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin met with a group of reporters and talked about a number of issues, from the outages its Gmail service has experienced to its efforts to digitize books to the company's culture.

Schmidt repeatedly deflected questions about the competition, saying Google prefers to focus on, well, Google. (In response to a question about Microsoft (MSFT) CEO MORE