The Google IPO always gets me. I can say I was wrong in 2004 about the success Google saw in the next 22 years. I remember writing something like this on one of those yellow notepads:
My main idea - In India, search is local, maybe Neteasy, yandex in other markets also. People start and stop with Rediff - email, cricket scores, news, search bar. Nobody is thinking "pure search company" as a business.
And Google isn't even winning on "features". AltaVista has MP3 search. Yahoo has portals for everything: Finance, Travel, Messenger, Games. The portal IS the internet for most people.
Google just has a white box and ten blue links. Feels too simple but is efficient and I personally like it.
But maybe search is just a feature. And backlinks are so easy to game and kinda win at pagerank. (Keyword stuffing anyone?)
But on the other hand - everyone is trying to be everything. And time spent and pagevuews is the big number every one is chasing. Google just wants to give the best answer to my query. That's tough and is like a tech company's Yahoo and Rediff are media/distribution businesses with a search bar.
----
In 2006-07 I was one of the highest spenders on "S.E.M" and Google Adwords took 90% of our spends.
Fast forward to 2026 - Google has Tensor chips, Gemini, full stack ai. Rediff barely exists because it isn't dead. AltaVista is dead. Yahoo is oops at best.
Craaaaazzzyyyyyyy
Google (2004)
Listed at $23B. GE was #1 at $382B. Gap: 17x
Google has since done 2 splits (2-for-1 in 2014, 20-for-1 in 2022) and returned ~13,000%
Facebook (2012): Listed at $104B. Apple was #1 at ~$566B. Gap: 5x. No splits ever. Returned ~1,700%
SpaceX (2026): Listed at $1.75T. Nvidia is #1 at ~$4.9T. Gap: 2.8x