Microsoft to Pay $240 Million for Stake in Facebook
Microsoft has won a high-profile technology industry battle with Google and Yahoo to invest in the social networking upstart Facebook. — The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would invest $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook.
Context & Ripple Effects
The deal caps a month of maneuvering: the Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft was in talks to buy a Facebook stake back in September, and today Microsoft closed it at $240 million for 1.6% — an implied valuation around $15 billion — after what the New York Times calls a bidding fight against Google and Yahoo. It also extends an existing commercial tie: Microsoft has been Facebook's advertising partner since August 2006, when the two signed a deal making Microsoft the seller of ads on the site.
The pickup was unusually broad — CNET, the Journal, TechCrunch liveblogging the press conference, and the satirical Secret Diary of Steve Jobs all carried it on or about the same day — which itself signals how much weight the industry placed on who would own a piece of Facebook's ad inventory.
First-order effects
- Microsoft converts its 2006 advertising relationship into equity plus expanded ad rights on Facebook, locking in exclusive access to fast-growing social-networking inventory while Google and Yahoo walk away empty-handed.
- Facebook banks $240 million at a roughly $15 billion implied valuation without an IPO, giving it capital and a heavyweight strategic backer in one move.
Second-order effects
- Google, shut out here, is pushing into adjacent ad markets instead — the same day it announced a Nielsen partnership to measure television audiences, extending its push from web search into TV ad sales.
- Yahoo, which lost both this deal and the earlier bid battle, faces pressure to find its own social-networking or inventory partner before Microsoft's Facebook position hardens into a default.
Third-order effects
- If platform giants keep paying premium minority stakes to secure ad distribution, social networks get valued as strategic ad assets rather than standalone businesses — concentrating web-advertising power among a handful of integrated players rather than open exchanges.
The trend: Web-advertising competition is shifting from search-keyword economics toward control of social-graph inventory, with Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo buying stakes and partnerships rather than building audiences themselves.