There’s been persistent rumours for as faraway as we can remember about Facebook being the thing of Yahoo!’s desire, with founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly turning down offers in the region of $2 BILLION. Yes, two billion dollars. However Microsoft, apparently keen to manufacture inroads with their some-what floundering Windows Live initiatives, is rumoured to be wanting Facebook, and badly. So badly that the price being whispered is around three times the price Yahoo offered: a whopping $6 billion dollars.

As InsideMicrosoft mentions, it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to be interested in Facebook, however they plus fail to mention one other small thing that that might, just might, be about: adverts. Facebook’s audience is huge - it’s not just University students using Facebook - and the Facebook site

would supply an easy way to expand Microsoft’s Advertising network onto one of the most popular sites on the web. No doubt it would please a lot of Microsoft Advertising folks to have the massive Facebook network on their books, providing them with an inroad into Google’s dominance in web advertising, not to mention a huge exclusive audience for Microsoft to offer advertisers.As ever, that is all rumours but one thing to note is that, whether the Microsoft warchest is opened to buy Facebook, the deal will compose a large dent on Microsoft’s cash reserves, whether these April 2007 figures are anything to go by.

Original post by Nik Fletcher

software podcast sun microsystems web mozilla design VoIP open source internet apple