The Google Diaspora

“It’s nothing. It’s so marginal.” Salman Ullah spits the words from his black Aeron in the corner office that serves as the headquarters of Merus Capital. Sean Dempsey, who cofounded Merus last November with Ullah and another man, Peter Hsing, had just started telling Ullah about a pitch he’d recently heard. The pitch had come from a company that is developing a new Web browser, and Ullah made his pronouncement on the basis of that information alone. It was almost a matter of principle: On a whiteboard that hangs on a wall of the office, Ullah had a few days ago scrawled a list, with the heading “Avoiding the Graveyard,” of businesses he does not believe Merus should invest in. Number two on the list was “Freeware, e.g., browsers.”

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