In the late 1990s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were developing a search engine that ranked web pages based on the quality of their links rather than simply counting keywords.

According to accounts from former executives and investors, the founders explored selling their search technology to Excite, then one of the internet’s leading portals. A frequently repeated story claims Google was offered for around $1 million, although some versions say the asking price was $750,000, and the exact figure has never been definitively verified.

Excite ultimately did not acquire Google. At the time, many internet companies focused on keeping users on busy portal-style homepages filled with news, email, and entertainment, while Google’s minimalist search page represented a very different philosophy.

Google continued independently and rapidly grew into one of the world’s most influential technology companies. Today, its parent company, Alphabet Inc., is worth trillions of dollars, making Excite’s reported decision one of Silicon Valley’s most famous “what if” stories.