Mark Lowton and his brother Paul turned down a $1.4 Billion dollar buyout offer from Google for their satirical web site the spoof.com.
"We are the best satire site on the internet", Mark said. "We won't sell for less than $1.5 Billion".
New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald asked Mark what the difference was between $1.4 Billion and $1.5 Billion.
"A hundred million", Mark said matter-of-factly. Paul simply shrugged his shoulders.
"That silly phone service Skype sold for over $4 Billion", Mark stated. "YouTube sold for $1.65 Billion. I think our asking price is a total bargain in comparison".
Paul Lowton pointed out that the spoof possesses proprietary "stars technology", a rating system that enables private individuals to rate the quality of each individual story on a scale of stars ranging from one to five. Many writers have complained that the stars do not reflect the quality of their stories.
"Five stars is best", said Paul. "One star sucks. Most stories fall somewhere in between. We don't tell the writers that their stories suck. We tell them there are other factors".
The Spoof also has unique "bar graph" technology which has been disabled to conserve bandwidth. If Google were to purchase the site they would undoubtedly reinstitute the program.
Yahoo has also made a buyout offer to the Lowton brothers. Details of the offer have not been disclosed.
