Rockstar Consortium US LP et al v. Google Inc

Filing 18

MOTION to Change Venue by Google Inc. (Attachments: # 1 Text of Proposed Order Google Inc's Motion to Transfer Venue, # 2 Index, # 3 Declaration of Abeer Dubey, # 4 Declaration of Sam Stake, # 5 Exhibit 1, # 6 Exhibit 2, # 7 Exhibit 3, # 8 Exhibit 4, # 9 Exhibit 5, # 10 Exhibit 6, # 11 Exhibit 7, # 12 Exhibit 8, # 13 Exhibit 9, # 14 Exhibit 10, # 15 Exhibit 11, # 16 Exhibit 12, # 17 Exhibit 13, # 18 Exhibit 14, # 19 Exhibit 15, # 20 Exhibit 16, # 21 Exhibit 17, # 22 Exhibit 18, # 23 Exhibit 19, # 24 Exhibit 20, # 25 Exhibit 21, # 26 Exhibit 22, # 27 Exhibit 23, # 28 Exhibit 24)(Mann, James)

EXHIBIT 1

A Brief History
Ryan McIntyre, Co-founder

Who were we?

Joe Kraus, Ben Lutch, Ryan McIntyre,
Martin Reinfried, Graham Spencer and Mark Van Haren.
Six Stanford undergrads who met in the same freshman dorm in 1989.
As graduation approached, we decided it would be more fun
to work for ourselves than go find real jobs.
In March 1993, over burritos at Rosita’s Taqueria in
Redwood City, CA, we decided to start a company.

“Unencumbered by reality”

Why decide to build a search engine in 1993?

We chose to start a company first. Then we chose the application.
Six founders: two CS majors, three Symbolic Systems majors,
one Political Science major. We liked software and language.
Our observation: relational databases had more or less “solved”
the structured data problem, but unstructured text
documents still lacked adequate tools for search and
discovery.
So we set out to build a search engine.
Architext Software was born.

1st Worldwide Headquarters: 3958 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto,CA

2nd Worldwide Headquarters: 10280 Lockwood Dr., Cupertino,CA

3rd Worldwide Headquarters: Garcia Ave, Palo Alto,CA

4th Worldwide Headquarters: 1091 Shoreline Dr, Mountain View, CA

Let the deal making begin!

July 1996, Excite acquires Magellan.
November 1996, Excite acquires WebCrawler from AOL,
AOL invests in Excite, Excite search powers AOL Search.
April 1997, Netscape Search & Directory Partnership
October 1997, Intuit invests $40M in Excite, Excite Business
and Investing Channel is launched
November 1997, Excite buys Netbot, comparison shopping engine
February 1998, Excite buys MatchLogic for $90M
April 1998, Excite buys Classifieds2000 for $50M
Late 1998, M&A talks begin with Yahoo, Microsoft, others
Excite revenues for 1998 reach $154M, Q4 1998 is cash-flow positive.

5th Worldwide Headquarters: 555 Broadway, Redwood City, CA

It seemed like a good idea at the time…
December 1998, Excite CEO George Bell and @Home CEO
Tom Jermoluk meet for the first time.
January 1999, @Home announces plans to buy
Excite for $6.7B in stock.
Vision: marriage of content and broadband access creates
AOL of the broadband age.
Excite CEO George Bell becomes CEO of combined company.
Merger officially closes in May 1999.
Q4 1999. First (and only) profitable quarter on $169M revenue.
CY 1999 Revenues reach $420M. Peak market cap of $35B.
Peak headcount of ~3200.
Silicon Valley Foreshadowing:
Excite@Home moves into shiny new HQ across the street.

Final Worldwide HQ: 400 - 420 Broadway, Redwood City, CA

The death spiral.

June 2001, Excite@Home raises $100M in convertible debt
from Promethean Capital Management and
Angelo & Co.
August 2001, E@H fires Ernst & Young, hires PWC. Debt
holders demand $50M debt repayment.
Cox & Comcast announce they will cease to offer internet via E@H.
September 2001. Blue Mountain Arts sold to American Greetings
for $35M in cash.
October 2001. Excite@Home files for Chapter 11. Nationwide
f
for
high-speed fiber network sold to AT&T for $307M.
f
for
iWon.com acquires Excite brand and Excite.com domain for $10M.
March 2004, Ask Jeeves acquires Excite Network.
March 2005, InterActiveCorp (Barry Diller) acquires Ask Jeeves.
InterActiveCorp
r

The End