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According to the article, they have 100 million users, most of them in Asia. Why is that not a success story?

Sure, they knocked back GOOG's $30m offer in 2003. Perhaps they didn't sell as they didn't want to be holding stock they couldn't sell if they wanted to (GOOG didn't float until August 2004). They managed to get an offer for more than three times as much, six years later.

Many of us would be happy with that kind of failure.

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Yes but the $30M Google stock would be worth over a billion right now if my quick (shitty) calculations aren't off, at least it should be that much once Google's stock gets around $700 again (can anyone verify this?)

And well there was $50M capital put in already so $100M is really like the least they could've gotten without the buy out being considered a complete failure. Then again I had no idea Friendster was worth anything really since I assumed it was dead.

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