Google Wanted To Buy Reddit Way Back When

Internet search giant Google had reportedly tried to buy website Reddit way back when in 2005 when Reddit was in its early days.

According to a report, Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian revealed the details during a press conference on Thursday (Nov. 10) at the Web Summit in Lisbon.

Ohanian told Business Insider a deal between Google and Reddit never happened because Ohanian and Cofounder Steve Huffman didn’t want to work for Google. Google wanted to use Reddit for the comments section, but the two founders were 22 and just out of college when Google approached them.

“We had just graduated from UVA, and four or five months later, we had Chris Sacca [who then served as Google’s head of special initiatives, but went on to become a billionaire investor, having made angel investments in Photobucket and Twitter] showing us around the offices … which was pretty cool,” said Ohanian. “The reason it didn’t go through … you know, at that time, it was just me and Steve. We had raised $82,000 in total at that point. We thought that was amazing. We were going to live off that for years. That was great. We didn’t think about hiring anyone, which was dumb. The offer was incredibly tempting.”

Ohanian said it ultimately came down to whether or not they wanted to work for Google, which they didn’t. “We weren’t big enough to justify a YouTube-style acquisition, where you do your own thing and have your own little world to operate. We were two dudes in an apartment. Do we want to become Google employees? As amazing as those perks were in 2005 — Google was the place to work — it wasn’t something we wanted to do quite yet.”

Google declined to comment to Business Insider on the report.