2026-09-02
Google Didn't Invent Search. It Bought the Ad Model in a Settlement
Second on my board is Google Search, at 97. But when it launched in September 1998, WebCrawler, Lycos, Infoseek, Excite and AltaVista were already running — and the paid-auction model that made it rich belonged to someone else. Overture sued for two years; the 2004 settlement cost Google 2.7 million shares. Neither of its two core pieces was original. It now holds 91.32% of global search.
