Since I was mentioning the PC Forum eventspace, this is what Google's Erick Schmidt mentioned in an interview from this event: 

"our business model generates enough cash from operations that we do not need to go public" -  it is a very diplomatic take, while it may be true nobody actually says that Google considered to go public because of the pressure from their investors who wanted the dough. Great to see that Google's management was smart and persuasive enough in waiting to figure out a truly competitive business model.

"Nobody gets what they want as the first result, so people are dissatisfied with the product." - I have been very busy these days and I needed a good search engine big time. I have to admit that I wasnot satisfied with Google at times and switched to Yahoo. And I got better results. I have no idea why is that - I am not sure it means either has a better engine, but it certainly proves my above claim of Google having to be patient for building a good biz model.

Read the rest here, it is interesting. There are also interviews with Yahoo's Dan Rosensweig and AOL' Jon Miller.