It's schizophrenic to say that Microsoft "overpaid" for Facebook because they'll be getting indirect benefits. It seems to me that their overpayment should be judged on whether they'd be better off with a) the stake in FB, or b) the cash.

yup... $240M is nothing to MS... they'd probably pay that much just to -

keep google out

make the Live search the only integrated search engine of FB

make Office Live the official "share your doc/work with your friend/co-worker" app on FB... (think of how much marketing $ they'd save)

That 1.6% is probably just something they throw in to make the deal sound more reasonable... instead of just calling it kickbacks..

From the article: "once Facebook goes public sometime in the next year or so." That seems amazing to me but I guess with a $15B valuation it's not absurd. news.YCers, do you think Facebook will IPO anytime soon?

I think that they paid too much also