Microsoft tried to buy Facebook

David Kirkpatrick already claimed that Microsoft wanted to buy Facebook in his book "The Facebook Effect".

According to Fritz Lanman who is Senior director of corporate strategy for Microsoft, Microsoft tried to buy Facebook at an earlier stage of the company. He revealed this at a talk of the Web Connference LeWeb in Paris on 8th of December 2010. / via @leweb and @techcrunch

Steve Ballmer @stevebmicrosoft offered Mark Zuckerberg 15 Billion $ for Facebook which Mark Zuckerberg did not agree to. When Steve Ballmer knew that he couldn´t buy Facebook, because Mark Zuckerberg was not willing to sell it, Microsoft bought 1,6% of facebooks shares for 240 Million $ in October 2007. Just shortly before that Steve Ballmer stated, that Facebook ist totally overrated with a Market Valuation of 15 Billion Dollars and then 40 Million Users.

Obviously its not since now there are more than 500 Million Users and market Valuation is a lot higher (according to Fritz Laman it could top the Value of Microsoft one Day)

Unfortunately there is no LeWeb Video yet..