Re:Ford vs Facebook
by AndrewDucker on Sunday May 13, 2012 @04:31PM
(#3968192)
Users and pageviews are _potential_ assets. You cannot sell either of those things, but you might find ways of making them produce money.
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There are many other intangible assets that produce money but are not easily sell-able: Trademarks, human capital, trade-secrets, other intellectual property, etc.
All of these would be in Ford's side without any doubt. Maybe profit-per-capita is the single benchmark they'd clearly lose at, and the fact that their workforce is largely unionized, which is a serious risk in times of hardship (they'd find themselves unable to cut expenses significantly, as it has happened many times in the past).
Ford vs Google might be a close one in terms of IP - hard to compare across industries though - but vs Facebook it's quite one-sided for Ford.