Exactly. If Yahoo was capable of nurturing Google into what it became, it was also capable of simply becoming that first. But it didn’t, because it wasn’t run by the same people who ran Google.

And I’m not saying that only Page and Brin were the only ones who could have made Google, only that they clearly were two people who were capable of doing it. However, Yahoo was not run by such people. So Yahoo would have bought Google and would have made Google conform to Yahoo’s culture, probably relegating Page and Brin to lesser roles where they couldn’t drive company culture.