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Steve Ballmer Says Microsoft Tried To Buy Facebook For $24 Billion (businessinsider.com)
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CNBC on Friday that his company tried to buy Facebook when it was "itsy-bitsy" for $24 billion. BusinessInsider adds: Facebook fielded a lot of offers in its early days. When CNBC on Friday asked Ballmer how much Microsoft offered back then, he said, "Oh I think $24 billion when the company was itsy-bitsy and he said no. And I respect that." Zuckerberg clearly made the right choice. He currently has a net worth of $57 billion and Facebook's market cap is $374 billion.
And numerous Yahoo acquisitions, when outsiders with no real understanding buy these things, the acquired companies just die.
I believe the word you were searching for is 'run'.
I wish Microsoft had succeeded, facebook might be extinct by now.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If someone offered me 24 billion for anything, even my hypothetical super-successful company that I built with my own blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice of a firstborn son, I would take it in a heartbeat. Same puzzlement over the Snapchat guys declining what I think was an overly generous offer for that company. Then again, I've never built such a company so I have no idea of what it means to give up control of it. Still... With 24 billion in your pocket you can pretty much do what you want, start your own new company, hell, start a space agency even...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yes, but the 24 billion would have been actual money, while Zuckerberg's current net worth depends on the market cap of Facebook, which you cannot realise during a sale.
Zuckerberg clearly made the right choice. He currently has a net worth of $57 billion
With only 24 Billion, he'd be living hand-to-mouth...
We value the wrong things.
Required reading for internet skeptics
A stolen website idea worth billions of dollars is not for sale and that's a point of admiration.. The war on innovation continues.
It would have created such an internet backhole sucking all the marketing crap it would probably have made it easy for us to avoid the crap we seen now on-line
Like it or not, Facebook is the single biggest, most successful "missed connections" network where you can rapidly establish an onljne association and communications channel with people you already know directly or proximately in other contexts. I.e. your cousin or great aunt or that friend of a friend from that D&D one-shot. That social graph has a pragmatic value to the people part of it, not just the people building and selling it.
Truth is, people value managed social connectivity over isolation; humans are social animals.
I have a greasemonkey script that turns "Steve Ballmer" into "Steve SweatyNutsack".
Microsoft would have ran it into the ground.
...
And you thought Microsoft was useless!
I don't get it...sure, that's about double the money, but at BILLIONS of dollars, what does that matter really?
I mean, geez...I'd have taken the $24B and live the rest of my life on easy street.....
I'm pretty sure I could somehow manage to stretch out $24B over the rest of my years on earth....[rolls eyes]
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
probably because it was less about the money, and more about control over his company/baby/project
Did he?. I mean, we can look at the outcome and say "yes, he made twice as much money". But I can look at the winner of powerball and say "that person now has a lifetime of whatever they want". Did they make the right choice to buy a ticket? Did the other people who bought a ticket also make "the right choice". I mean, it was the same choice (esp. since most winners auto-pick their numbers now, so pretend that happened in this example).
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Zuckerberg clearly made the right choice. He currently has a net worth of $57 billion and Facebook's market cap is $374 billion.
This kind of statement ignores all of the uncertainty of the time. Remember the AOL-TimeWarner merger? Remember when that one dotcom turned down the $500M buyout offer, only to disappear in 2 years. (Which was it? I want to say something like Snapchat or Instagram... but they are all so flash-in-the-pan they meld into each other.)
Saying that it was clearly the correct choice is not true. Yes, Facebook got big. Yes, Zuckerberg and the others are worth 10x more, through their own blood, sweat, toil, tears, and more than a little luck. Remember the big fight they had with MySpace back in the past? They could easily have gone under.
By the same reasoning, we can say that the latest Powerball jackpot winner clearly made the right choice, as they are now a multi-millionaire for the measly cost of a lottery ticket.
Elop never worked for Facebook.
Ya well it probably wasn't 24 Billion in cash. These deals usually have some very low value in cash (well in relation, huge to me or you), and most of it would have been in MS stock, which depending on its worth at the time determines its value. Likely trying to sell 24 Billion in stock is hard to do, and would probably affect the value, even if there wasn't wording in the agreement saying that you could do that right away.
When ever I see these large values being thrown around I have to remind myself that they are largely imaginary values. i.e, Facebook is "worth" 374$ Billion. Yahoo used to be "worth" a lot more, or I wonder how Tom at Myspace is doing these days. Foursquare comes to mind also. These valuations in billions for these tech companies are not based on actual assets or anything... Heck I can only imagine the arcane wizardry used to dream up what some of these things are worth.
Granted MS is pretty stable as those things go, but still. That said, I also would have taken the money and run and probably do something else with the rest of my life.
Now that's true. I *hate* facebook. But I have crap to sell and there are a lot of dumbfucks on facebook whom I can sell my crap to.
Yeah but his current valuation is based on his stock position with Facebook stock. There is no way, for example, that he could sell all of his stock at current market value without crashing the value. So if the offer from Microsoft was a cash offer, that may have been a much better bargain IMHO.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
No Microsoft offered $24B for what the stock market values at $374B now. They were looking to buy the company, not Zuckerbergs share of it.
Why are people so enormously hypocritical?
I don't know, roman_mir. Please tell us.
But I have crap to sell and there are a lot of dumbfucks on facebook whom I can sell my crap to.
In the immortal words of Mark Zuckerberg, "Welcome to Facebook."
I guess I don't understand that.
The ONLY reason I work, is to earn enough $$ to fund my lifestyle I like when I'm not having to work.
If it were me and they offered me for something I started up, I'd sell it so fast your head would spin.
I'd much rather spend my time doing fun things that working or nurturing a company.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
both are correct. this form uses the verb in a simple past form, your case would be the past perfect. both are correct, one is just more formal
I'd much rather spend my time doing fun things that working or nurturing a company.
And I'm sure Zuckerberg felt that growing Facebook was a fun thing.
Once he was offered several billion for his company, he probably figured he could continue with this fun project knowing he could always bail and get at least one billion.
I don't think so
http://www.verbix.com/webverbi...