How we managed to sell BeatThatQuote to Google this week.

by Saul on 10 March 2011  |  2 comments
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Google purchased BeatThatQuote for 37.7 million pounds this week, but did you realise what an insignificant role we played in that transaction?

Google purchased Beat That Quote this week for 37.7 million pounds. Our instant reaction? Why was that philanthropy not directed at us? We are surely worthy? We are nice folks. We have been to America. We are the good guys, the ethical guys, the ones who do it for our customers. We deserved this, why did Google break our hearts and choose Beat That Quote? Did they need help, were they like a donkey without a home? We could have been a donkey. We are a donkey damn it! 

Once the dust had settled on the transaction, and we regained our sanity, we began to recollect how they had actually tried to acquire us. How could we have forgotten,was it simply down to the excitement of Christmas? Here is how the tale unfolds...

Just a few months ago their agents of evil were dispatched to our offices. They said they wanted to help players in the financial space, they realised knew that deeply secret credit card testing had upset the financial aggregators, and they were now being viewed with suspicious eyes. They wanted to make amends, they wanted to help us. They offered to help us, all we had to do was tell them about our business.

We saw through this ploy instantly, and instead told them that we did not care what they did, that there was nothing they could do that would hurt us. We told them how we don't spend too much on adwords anymore, and as we don't rank on natural search due to our outlandish approach to quality content and community was downgraded in the last algorithm change. They told us we would rank more favourably if we became Virgin and just concentrated on a credit card application page. We told them that this was not possible due to multiple trademark and impersonation laws.

They seemed afronted that we would not sell to them. They told us they were the big-G, and they would unload all sorts of g-awsomeness on us if we did not listen to their g-plan. We asked why they prefaced everything with "G", and that we felt this was slightly childlike. We then told them about the new site from lovemoney.com, lovefood. They did not see the irony. They then said that they wanted to merge 2 click comparisson with search and their very own adwords network. We told them they had confused us with this complex talk. They told us they wanted proprietary technology to help customers find products quicker. At this point we sported out baffled look. They told us they were commited to the semantic web, where traffic would flow freely across multiple sites. We had glazed over entirely by this point and one of us was approaching REM. They asked if we knew who they were, who we were dealing with here. They asked if we knew of the brothers? We left the room and did some other things; took a walk in golden sq, some of us had a picnic, others did a jigsaw puzzle. A big one. Yet when we returned, they were still there. They had changed our meeting room browser to chrome. They had located us on google maps. They had even set up a lovemoney.com google wave account. Still we said no. Still we held out. It reminded me of the night pirates. We were that brave. 

They talked about 100 million. We played ping pong. They pointed at a armoured vehicle outside our office and insinuated that it was full of cash. We told them about the troubles we are having with a point of sale marketing company who share our office lobby, yet use it as a Disney cardboard cut-out storage area. Nick, one of our best three mortgage people, suffered quite a fright one night when he clashed with a 9ft tall buzz lightyear.

There was no stopping them though, they would not take no for an answer, so we did the ethical thing. We said yes, but secretly we didn't mean it. Once they had left, we called China. They were the only people we could think of who had taken on the Big G and won. When China and Google collided, the unethical one had to stick to their principles, this is how it would be done. 

The number went up though, we were now at 2 billion and multiple vans were arriving outside. We were starting to crack, they told us they would buy Beat That Quote, we told them we had never heard of them. The conversation broke down, and we knew there was irreparable damage, we had liked Google, we had felt they viewed us as something of a mentor. Now all that was gone. They want our space, they want what we have. It made us angry, so we reacted the only way we know. We started work on a search engine. And so it begins, an epic battle between two media giants, locked in a corporate struggle through cyberspace and destined to supply each other's eventual destruction.

Just remember. We did not ask for this. The big G did.

[We would like to point out that the above post in no way reflects reality. For an actual representation of our comment on the transaction, please click here.