31–40 of 54 posts
Well, this has been evident for a long time. Mark Zuckerberg intends to rule Facebook, not by consensus, but by himself. When Zuckerberg was forced to make an IPO, he did everything in his power to minimize outside control. I also believe(not sure about this), that Zuckerberg still retains majority control of the company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't say yet whether it was a poor choice. Instagram was a very credible threat to Facebook. Its growth curve and primary use bear a strong resemblance to Facebook's. People laughed at Google for buying YouTube for $1.65 billion. Now every single big company wishes they had done it instead.
You're missing my point; I'm not questioning the decision but the process, the governance. The board is there to represent shareholder interests, if they get bypassed like this on a decision this big, then what is the point of them being there? I think it was Sergey Brin who recently said something about an investment in Google being a long-term bet on his/Page's decision making. It's like the world has suddenly forg…
There's nothing "arbitrary" about his decision to buy Instagram. And the fact that he makes decisions like this shouldn't be any more cause for concern then the fact that he makes decisions about whether to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of servers, hire 5000 more employees, or whatever.
The board is there to advise and prevent malfeasance -- not to run the company.
Complaining about how some of the most successful companies in history are run (Google/Facbook/Apple/Microsoft) is rather odd. Do you really think their shareholders would be better served with boards like HP's?
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Yes, the round closed the day before the acquisition, iirc.
that makes the IRR a crazy 1.33x10^3175% [1] funny that they would only need to let their investment ride into equivalent investments for another 21 days before reaching a return of 209 Trillion dollars, which is in excess of the total value of all stocks, bonds and currency in the world. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%3D+%281+billion+-+500+...
I would really be surprised if this didn't affect the IPO. Why would people put money into a business with corporate governance this poor?
Zuckerberg obviously doesn't give a shit what public investors think, and rightly so. You can't lead a world-changing company in growth stage by kowtowing to what "the market" thinks. Instead he will do what he thinks is best for Facebook, and if it works, the stock price will go up, if it doesn't, it will go down.
Full article: https://www.google.com/search?q=In+Facebook+Deal%2C+Board+Wa...
Doesn't work for me; WSJ must have shut it down. Though Google cache pulled through, at least for now: http://bit.ly/IIBabu
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Doesn't work for me; WSJ must have shut it down. Though Google cache pulled through, at least for now: http://bit.ly/IIBabu
WSJ seems to have made a recent change to stop the old search-for-the-title-in-google trick. If you visit the article first and then leave and come back with google referers it doesn't work anymore. But if you've never visited the article and you come from google it does show it. Even when you delete your cookies and then try to come via google it won't show the article. That means they're using flash cookies or some…
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To view any WSJ article, search Google News for the exact title. WSJ has a deal with Google to let visitors view the entire article.
Deal? Or is this an artifact that Google doesn't index content behind a paywall so WSJ has to display the whole article to the Google spider and anyone who's refer is Google. If WSJ (or anyone else) doesn't want to lose the search engine traffic they're force to do this.
To implement First Click Free, you need to allow all users who find a document on your site via Google search to see the full text of that document, even if they have not registered or subscribed to see that content. The user's first click to your content area is free. However, once that user clicks a link on the original page, you can require them to sign in or register to read further.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
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You can't say yet whether it was a poor choice. Instagram was a very credible threat to Facebook. Its growth curve and primary use bear a strong resemblance to Facebook's. People laughed at Google for buying YouTube for $1.65 billion. Now every single big company wishes they had done it instead.
You're missing my point; I'm not questioning the decision but the process, the governance. The board is there to represent shareholder interests, if they get bypassed like this on a decision this big, then what is the point of them being there? I think it was Sergey Brin who recently said something about an investment in Google being a long-term bet on his/Page's decision making. It's like the world has suddenly forg…
In this case it's worth noting that the CEO is also the largest shareholder, so it is difficult to argue they weren't representing shareholder interest.
Full article: https://www.google.com/search?q=In+Facebook+Deal%2C+Board+Wa...