I'm not sure that's an inside-out acquisition as Larry Page would not have control of Excite in any meaningful way.

My point was more that if a guy wants to start a company to create passive income to fund his massively ambitious research projects, he would need the foresight to know the company would be massively successful, like throw off enough cash to pursue projects that would appear frivolous successful, and I don't think the Google founders had that foresight. Obviously I wasn't there, but trying to sell it to multiple suitors (they were also open to selling to Yahoo as late as 2002 afaik) indicates they didn't. My understanding is nobody knew search would be as lucrative as it it today.

Not to say you're fabricating your story, I'm sure they said that, but perhaps it's some revisionist history.