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Comment by justchilly | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong but didnt Hennessy, while President of Stanford, agree to give away university-owned page rank IP to Google for $1mm (a company he was conveniently personally invested in) thereby lining himself up for massive personal gains at the expense of the University?

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Right, that's why Google is still paying Stanford for the license, and gave the university shares that were worth $360M in 2005 already? [0]

"In 2012, Google paid Stanford $80,000 for the license, a sharp decline from the $400,000 paid in 201a and only 1/10 of what Google paid in 2010. Since Google began disclosing these payments, the company has paid Stanford around $3 million in licensing fees. Of course, that’s in addition to the $1.8 million shares that Google issued to Stanford, and which the school sold for $336 million in 2005.Google made up some of the difference by donating $3.4 million to Stanford for scholarships and what the proxy describes as “other philanthropic endeavors”, compared with $3 million in 2011."

[0] https://www.footnoted.com/new-details-in-googles-proxy-on-st...

Stanford sold for an average of $187 per share for the 1.8mm they received. That was years later at the IPO beyond. At the time they received them the value was far far lower (likely on the order of what I suggested). And the license amounts.. the article says it was 80k in 2012. That's an awful licensing agreement by any measure. This is a company that Stanford's own president - a genius by any measure - was an investor in so clearly believed in it's value, and yet he agreed to sell the IP essentially for a pittance to himself.

The annual fees to use the algorithm is probably not substantial and a quirk of the agreement, and the substantial part of the licensing agreement is the 1 million or so shares that they received.

The share grant must have been fairly early on the history of the company (or else Google won't be able to use PageRank, which was fundamental to Google Search), probably pre-Series A. Google itself wasn't worth that much back then, so the 1M shares was probably bigger slice of a much smaller pie that eventually got diluted through later funding rounds.

It was reported that Standford made more than $300M off their shares and they get yearly royalties. I think they did ok on that deal.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/12/21/stanfords-ideas-gener...

That makes it "only" the second most profitable Stanford patent ever. If they had only waited a little longer before cashing out...

Create more value than you capture.

According to [1], Stanford received 1.8 million shares of Google stock (I'd imagine for PageRank and other rights), and they sold it over time for $336 million.

[1] http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/318480/stanford_earns...

If they hadn't sold it in 2005, it would be worth $3.6B now (10x in 12 years), more than 10% of Stanford's total endowment.

If they hadn't sold it then should they sell it now?

Always sell half, and keep half.

$3.6B figure looks about right, but the growth was more like 20x. Don't forget the 2:1 stock split in 2014.

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