A somewhat similar story: around the same time I was working on Numbler, a collaborative spreadsheet that I launched (unluckily) a couple of months before google spreadsheet went live. Numbler had some cool features that would enable you to see real time changes from other collaborators, see dynamic updates when someone else changed cell formulas, integration with internet data sources, etc.

I got the attention of Google and was flown into NYC for an interview / talk with the spreadsheet team. Similarly, I was also a one man shop since my founder had bailed on me and left for Google 3 months prior! Things went pear shaped when I failed to get through the algorithm gristmill. I had one poor interview with a beaver/rat ringed kid who was eager to demonstrate his intellectual superiority (or so it felt at the time).

The frustrating part is that as an entrepreneur your thoughts are ranging from how to make money/business model to UI design to backend engineering. I was expecting that the googlers would at least show some interest in Numbler - but that wasn't how the meetings were structured. The google PM (Fuzzy was his name) was interested, but seemed hamstrung by the google process. Google never asked me about any of the tricks I used work to build the UI, COMET style networking for responsiveness, etc.

In retrospect, Numbler was an acquisition play and needed a much better strategy and larger vision to succeed. I did end up with a google NYC t-shirt...