They also fended off any sort of corporate raiders/vulture capitalists who could leverage a billion in debt, buy it out, take it private, then strip it of assets.
Growing tech companies have never really been expected to pump out dividends.
Microsoft didn't pay one until 2003, when it was 28 years old and sitting on $43 billion in cash (and then it declared an annual dividend totalling less than $1 billion).
The absolute horror.