Winning Independence
To guarantee their independence, the Google founders played joint stock-holding companies against one another. After several months of negotiations and battles, they struck a deal with two venture capital firms, with each taking equal shares in Google. This odd arrangement would play a significant role in Google's future success because Google immediately doubled its network of contacts and advisors. But perhaps more importantly, this arrangement relieved the pressure Page and Brin would have encountered had they worked with only one investor who would likely have pushed for them to build a more traditional organization.
Page and Brin demonstrated their independence again at the time of Google's initial public offering (IPO). ...
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