Hasta La Gadget!

Apr 03

Facebook Turns Down $1.6 Billion to Join Yahoo!

This article was written on December 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

I thought Facebook would undoubtedly be the next YouTube and sell their soul to another company. At $1 billion I thought it was a done deal but as it turns out that just isn’t enough:

Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social networking website, has told Yahoo!, the internet giant, that $1 billion is not enough to sell out. Now leaked documents suggest that Yahoo! was willing to raise its bid to $1.6 billion.

So why would Facebook be turning down so much money? They are either really set on keeping it an independent service or there are other offers on the table. Back in October there were rumors that Google was offering $2.35 billion for Facebook which falls quite short of offers Yahoo! has made for them.

The CEO is Mark Zuckerberg and is only 22 years old. He owns 30% of the company and the recent offer of $1.6 billion from Yahoo! would put $480 million in his pocket. What’s pretty cool is that he is one of the most casual CEO’s I have ever heard of:

One story has it that Microsoft had to abandon a planned 8am conference call with Zuckerberg because he said that he would still be in bed then. Zuckerberg, who often turns up to his office in Palo Alto, California, wearing Adidas sandals, took exception to a drawing in The Wall Street Journal because it showed him wearing a shirt with a collar instead of his habitual T-shirt.

At this point Zuckerberg might be hoping for other offers from other large companies like Microsoft and Google before finalizing any decisions. Man, $480 million (which is what he would get) is quite a bit of money though. Let’s just hope they don’t get too greedy and start to lose popularity like Friendster.