By crazy, Ullah said he meant start-ups that have freed themselves from accepted design or investment constraints in pursing a new technology, application or service. Tellingly, he added the company isn't all that interested in online firms that can only offer extra traffic without having already built a solid revenue stream from its users.
"Companies, whether Google or otherwise, set out to buy viable businesses," Burley says. "A business or technology in an acquisition is only as valuable as its ability to produce profits for the buyer," he says.
Instead, start-ups need to show that they have overcome a barrier of know-how or development time to end up with something attractive to Google.
"All of this requires a lot of capital, which is not well spent if success is depending upon being acquired," Burley adds.
Image: Google founders Larry Page (left) Sergey Brin. | Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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