Saturday, October 27, 2007

Internet firms | Friend accepted | Economist.com

The Economist on Microsoft's Facebook investment

Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook's other early investors, of course, have carried off the biggest victory. Mr Zuckerberg is now worth some $3 billion on paper. Google will not suffer much. Its seemingly endless rise continues. Its own social network, Orkut, does well in emerging markets and is about to get a revamp that may make it a stronger rival to Facebook. It is Google's and Microsoft's other rival, Yahoo!, which now looks really forlorn. It has been outmanoeuvred by everybody in the acquisition game. It keeps losing to Google in search and advertising, and unlike Microsoft it has no software-licence revenues to fall back on. Last week it shut down its own social network, Yahoo 360°, and hardly anybody noticed.

Internet firms | Friend accepted | Economist.com

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