As I wrote, I agree that a Google acquisition would not have made a difference for Excite.
Excite's key mistake was before any Google negotiations: when Excite demoted search to be just one part of a larger strategy – which apparently involved a lot of distracting politics with cable companies – instead of search being the strategy.
(Of course, as a high-flying public company needing to report results in 1999, 2000, etc, that potential cable-subscriber revenue sharing – recurring revenue from millions of subscribing households! – must've been very tempting for Excite. The scale & margins ultimately possible with keyword-based, pay-per-click ads were still speculative in 1999. Google Adwords only launched in late 2000, using CPM-impressions pricing, and only added pay-per-click keyword bidding in 2002.)
Excite's key mistake was before any Google negotiations: when Excite demoted search to be just one part of a larger strategy – which apparently involved a lot of distracting politics with cable companies – instead of search being the strategy.
(Of course, as a high-flying public company needing to report results in 1999, 2000, etc, that potential cable-subscriber revenue sharing – recurring revenue from millions of subscribing households! – must've been very tempting for Excite. The scale & margins ultimately possible with keyword-based, pay-per-click ads were still speculative in 1999. Google Adwords only launched in late 2000, using CPM-impressions pricing, and only added pay-per-click keyword bidding in 2002.)