PayPal v. Google

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel talks to Investors Business Daily about PayPal's IPO two years ago as compared to Google's upcoming IPO.

PayPal started the IPO process a little earlier (in its life). It wasn't profitable then, but became profitable in early 2002. Google became profitable earlier, but it held off going public.

Both companies in some ways are very similar. They made Internet business models more workable. PayPal took the online payments model, which had largely failed, and got it to work. Google took online advertising, which was more or less failing in 2001, and got that to work.