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Microsoft CEO: Zuckerburbs Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up to Be

ballmerfist.jpgFor someone considering taking a stake in Facebook that could value it at $10 billion, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t seem to think very much of the social-networking site.

In an interview with the Times Online, Ballmer didn’t seem so sure Zuckerburbia deserves the jaw-dropping valuation given it. “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years,” he said, noting that GeoCities, a community site acquired by Yahoo for $3 billion in 1999, offered much of what Facebook offers today. “I think these things are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a … faddish nature about anything that appeals to younger people.”

And that’s a truism worth noting. Before Facebook, there was TheGlobe.Com and before Mark Zuckerberg there was–shudder–Stephan Paternot.

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Kara Swisher

Do you need me to draw you the bright straight line from Skype to Facebook or can you see it all by yourself? Ok, for those who refuse to live in a little place I like to call reality, let's review the news coming out of eBay yesterday regarding their 2005 acquisition of Skype for the then unheard of price of $2.6 billion. The Internet auction giant declared the purchase of the once hot online telephone startup a dud Monday, taking an asset-impairment charge of $1.43 billion for the deal. In addition, Skype founder and CEO Niklas Zennström was out. The move, said eBay in a filing, represented "updated long-term financial outlook for Skype." Quickie translation: Major buyer's remorse.

About John

John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.

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