Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet

Description

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out

Larry Page should have been in a good mood. It was the fall of 2007, and Google's cofounder was in the middle of a five-day tour of his company's European operations in Zurich, London, Oxford, and Dublin. The trip had been fun, a chance to get a ground-floor look at Google's ever-expanding empire. But this week had been particularly exciting, for reasons that had nothing to do with Europe; Google was planning a major investment in Facebook, the hottest new company in Silicon Valley.

Originally Google had considered acquiring Facebook—a prospect that held no interest for Facebook's executives—but an investment was another enticing option, aligning the Internet's two most important companies. Facebook was more than a fast-growing social network. It was, potentially, an enormous source of personal data. Internet users behaved differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They used their real names, connected with their real friends, linked to their real email addresses, and shared their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knew relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.

But now, as Page took his seat on the Google jet for the two-hour flight from Zurich to London, something appeared to be wrong. He looked annoyed, one of his fellow passengers recalls. It turned out that he had just received word that the deal was off. Microsoft, Google's sworn enemy, would be making the investment instead— $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the company, meaning that Redmond valued Facebook at an astonishing $15 billion.

As the 767 took ...

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http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall#

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall#