loverobots

That explains why she isn't smiling :) . Seriously people, smile for crying out loud. You know billions of people will see that picture over the years.

Technically, but the minute you go public you have to worry about the stock price. If the stock drops (IMO, it will drop here) expect a deluge of doom and gloom stories from the media questioning their business model and everything else in between. Then you may have unhappy employes due to the stock drop, harder time hiring, higher expenses since the stock price isn't rising and so on. Bezos did it so far, but it isn't easy. Zuckenberg sold a nice chunk of his $100 Billion company, buyers will be vocal if the price drops.

FB will have to do everything right for a few years just to justify the $100 billion price tag. It's not easy as ads can drive people away.

This "AI" is just scrapping and replacing wikipedia while serving ads.

So no major surprises. I doubt they just pick a number and just hope to sell $16 Billion

Smart move though, having $10+ billion in the bank must feel nice and leave a lot of room to maneuver.

Personally, I don't think FB is worth $100+ billion. Maybe $30 to $40 billion.

By the way, Microsoft is still growing all while investing in xBox, Bing and Microsoft Research (PE of around 11 and valued north of $250 Billion.) They have returned tens of billions to shareholders via dividends and still have almost $50 Billion in reserve. This blogger should send his resume and ideas to the board of top companies if he can do better as CEO.

Microsoft is about to make a cool and predictable $25 Billion in profit this year. 25,000,000,000.00 in just one year. Not sure what will happen 5-10 years from now (no one really does) but it's a great achievement for a "dead" company.

I use Bing and DDG and maybe once or twice a week I need to use Google to double check. Bing is more than fine for "most users," but Google has a powerful brand, they have a lot of goodwill and they open their checkbook to buy traffic (Mozilla, Opera, iOS, portals etc.)

Edit: All the above (even extra Googlebot servers to index new sites in seconds) are because Google can "monetize better," or has a lot of traffic which in turn attracts advertisers that bid up prices. Google is also shameless in adding dozens of ads in all places so they have lots of money to maintain their status quo. Put Bing or DDG results on Google.com, under the Google logo and very few "regular" people will complain.

He is connected, famous and rich so he can afford to and can pick the early stage companies to through a bit of money at, hoping a few strike. But, there's a difference between billion dollar sized funds and angel ones.

I think he knows it well. Like it or not Apple is AAPL, or there to make money for shareholders. Would "being open" result in more money for the people that bought a tiny slice of a $500 Billion pie? Will any CEO try when they're making $50 Billion or whatever they're making this year in profit? Not sure

You may want to try to bring some common sense in as a last try, but a year and no users or revenue is a major warning.

Out of 4 people only one can code...not a good thing, at all.