MSFB

So it looks like Microsoft was the one that won out in buying a minority stake in Facebook, paying $240 million to be able to say that.  Microsoft was fighting with Google, and somewhat Yahoo, for the stake.  The approximate value placed on Facebook with this investment is $15 billion. Along with a small stake, Microsoft also grabbed the rights to be the exclusive advertiser for Facebook overseas.  This is in addition to Microsoft's exclusive ad deal with Facebook for the US until 2011. 

I'm not too surprised that Microsoft won out on this one.  If for no other reason than the history the two companies have.  Despite Facebook constantly being likened to Google, they have worked closely with Microsoft for quite some time, and have shied away from dealing with the search giant.  Also, just looking at the employees that are on Facebook, Microsoft dominates there too.  Even Billy G has a Facebook profile.

Facebook says that it plans to use the money for additional people and possible acquisitions.  It will also try to expand its reach in the international market.  Today it is fairly large in North America and Western Europe, but little elsewhere. 

One pretty interesting part of all of this is that it lends that much more credibility to Facebook.  While it has become quite popular with online media, by being able to establish such a large valuation, it really sets itself up as a big deal.  To put things in some perspective, JC Penney has a market cap of $12.1 billion, about $3 billion less than Facebook's valuation.  Pretty neat, huh?

Need to Take a Detour?

In their continuing demonstration of why they are the greatest thing in the world, Google has added the ability to drag routes in their maps. When you get directions somewhere, you can click and drag the blue route line around and to other destinations. This means that you can get your basic start and destination put in, and then make adjustments to avoid traffic, take a detour, or just realize you need to go somewhere else. The entire route can be changed after your first plotting. Start point, end point, and everything in between. It’s yet another one of those features that makes you love Google all the more.

Google Gears Breaking Reader?

I am a huge fan of Google Reader, and think that the new Google Gears add on is a wonderful idea. I'm looking forward to when more websites are making use of it. However, today Gears seems to be causing Reader to not load. Uninstalling Gears seems to have fixed the problem for me. Anyone else having any issues? Given the still experimental nature of Gears I'm not too upset, but it is a bummer to see a bug crop up.

I’m in Your City Photographing Your Buildings

I’m sure you know what I think about the people upset over Google’s new Street View. The stupidity is not just contained at an individual level, though. The U.S. government is shaking in their booties too. They are trying to tell us that terrorists can use services such as Google’s or Microsoft’s to plot out future escapades. My question is, do they really need these tools to plan attacks? Terrorists don’t seem to have any problems getting into our country. Why is it that they can’t just run down to the gas station, buy a map, and then drive around town with a camera? Then they could send this information to their friends back home and they would have exactly the same information that is available to the rest of us. This would even allow for a more specific look at things than the current services offer. I mean, do I think that terrorists can’t use these services, or won’t consider using them? Of course not. I just think that these services aren’t giving them anything they couldn’t already get.

The Google Van. Quick, Hide the Cat!

I can't say I always agree with Scoble, but I think he's on the right track with this one. People have been making a huge fuss about the privacy concerns due to Google's new Street View on their maps. If you aren't familiar with it, you should definitely check it out. Head to New York, NY for an example. The feature allows you to look around the streets with a pretty decent amount of detail. Anyhow, a lady raised a big ruckus because you can see her cat sitting in her window, and she felt like this was somehow a major breach in her privacy. What she, and all these fearmongers that are jumping on board with it, seem to forget is that it is perfectly legal to photograph things that are visible while just driving down the street. It is amazing how many times people rise up to defend photographers that get told they can't take pictures of people in public, yet fail to see how this is the same thing. Do a little research next time, OK?

On a side-note, Scoble talks about not wanting marketing firms to have all this info on him and what he buys. Personally, if an advertiser knows all about me and will start sending me coupons about things I need or like instead of just getting spam, I'd be all for it.

A Face Only a Google Could Love

Google has grabbed my attention twice this week, and It's only Wednesday. They earlier announced the new feature of street level views in Google Maps, and today Ars Technica talks about their new image search ability that lets you just search for images with faces in them. You can see the difference yourself by looking here and then here. The way that you can try this feature out for yourself is simply stick "&imgtype=face" on the end of the search URL. As Ars points out, this is likely a feature they've gained through their acquisition of Neven, which I've brought up in the past. This just goes to show the truly awesome things that are posisble with technology out there. I'm looking forward to the day that I can click a button to have my webcam take a picture of me, and then search the net for all photos with me in them. Well, all two of them, that is.

Interesting Evidence

I could be reading way too much into this, but based on what Eric Schmidt said in the Financial Times, I think that buying Facebook would play right in line with this.

Will Google Own Facebook?

The other day TechCrunch had a post about the who might buy Facebook. The company that they consider to be the “obvious candidate” is Google. I don’t know if I think Google is interested, but they do have some good points. For one, according to comScore Facebook is the number one photo sharing site with more than 6 millions photos uploaded each day. On a side note, that is absolutely insane when you think about it. When Google bought YouTube they secured dominance in the online video marketplace. Given that MySpace recently bought Photobucket, Google could buy a major player in the social networking space AND dominance in online photo sharing. The question is, do they want to? Google is already involved with photos through their Picasa photo organizer. They also offer online sharing of them via Picasa online albums. I don’t know an exact number, but I think there is all of three people using that. Also, in the second half of 2006, Google bought Neven Vision which makes technology for recognizing items in photos to allow for better organization. These all show that Google does have an interest in photos, but is it a big enough interest to make them buy Facebook.
With Facebook there is also the social networking aspect. Google currently owns Orkut, but unless you’re in Brazil you’re not likely to know anyone using it. With Facebook would come all of its users. That is a big number of people that would see Google’s ads. Orkut does show, though, that Google has at least a dabbling interest in the social networking scene.
As a user of Facebook, I could not think of anything that would make me happier than Google buying them. I still think that Facebook is a wonderful service and site, even though I don’t use it as much as I used to. On their own, they are managing to do a really good job of making a great service. But let’s face it, I love Google and want them to take over the world. I can only imagine that if they did acquire Facebook that only good things could come from that.
All of this is speculation, obviously, as Facebook could be grabbed by someone else, or they could go the IPO route. Zuckerberg has said that he wants to keep the company independent, but as TechCrunch accurately points out, it really isn’t his choice to make. His investors are the ones that will make the final call, and at the end of the day they are looking to make the most money possible. With Google’s giant stacks of cash, they could easily provide that.

iGoogle, uGoogle, everyoneGoogle

For those of you that don't know (which should really be none of you since you should already be using this), Google has renamed their Personalized Homepage to iGoogle. Ars Technica says that according to a Google VP, the name was originally thought up back in 2005 but wasn't used at the time. Given the URL, I'm pretty sure that this is the case. I've been using the service ever since it first launched, and I love it. I've been trying to convince people to use it and see the goodness. I love the customization that it allows. I know that there are a lot of customizable home pages out there, but I still prefer Google's. Part of that could just be that I've been using it for so long. With this new name also comes the ability to create custom gadgets. They're touting it as the ability to build your own gadget without any programming, but it seems to mostly just be a configurable pre-made one. Well, not just one, there are a few. I don't know how useful they'd be, though, and none of them were personally interesting to me, for what it's worth.

There have also been a lot of reports lately with people having problems with their iGoogle pages. They have been reverting back to previous versions that had been used. This hasn't happened to me, so I can't speak from personal experience, but a few people I know have had it happen. One of them confirmed that within a day it reset itself back to how he originally had it. However, since he had already started rebuilding it, it took those changes into account as well. I'm pretty confident that this is a result of the changes that they have been doing, and is not likely to be a long term problem. I've been using the page for a couple years now, and this is the first time I've seen problems like this. I wouldn't let these reports discourage you from using it.