Now that I think about it I'm not sure why they had to accept investor money at all. I wonder if it would have turned out differently if they had remained 100% privately owned?
Because growth... Without the R&D money, Microsoft or Yahoo, or someone else would have figured out how to do what they do faster/better, waited until google was a forgotten name and then enshittified.
When you make a lot of money, the number you see in your account starts to become part of your identity because it differentiates you between you and the people you see every day. The same way if I had blue curly hair, that would become a defining factor of where I “differ” from the general public. The numbers in one’s account becomes an obsession-point.
People get obsessed with the number and how much bigger they can make it. It’s like hoarding. No amount will ever be enough. And once you’re able to buy anything, the actual value of that money becomes meaningless. So even more drive to bring the number up because that’s the only novelty you are getting.
When you make a lot of money, the number you see in your account starts to become part of your identity because it differentiates you between you and the people you see every day.
"Tres Comas is for winners." (A wonderful line delivery by the huge asshole venture fund bro in Silicon Valley, that illustrates your point)
These were a couple of PhD geeks who hit it big, it's certainly not inevitable that intelligent people get absorbed with money, see the creator of VLC for example. It's just sad that these guys could have been rich AND kept the internet 'pure' and research focused. But instead commerce has crept in and taken a shit on what was once a clean simple brilliant search service.
It's widely celebrated that Jean Baptiste Kempf, who could have easily sold VLC for tens of millions, declined to do so (or more accurately lead the steering group that jointly decided) keeping the enormously popular video player free and open source