Now that I’m at Amazon, it’ll be a bit easier for me to blog about the search industry. I still won’t be discussing Microsoft strategy, and I’ll be nice as it’s a small world. But hey… everyone loves being the armchair quarterback!

One of the big topics out there is Facebook, or to be direct, the valuation and acquisition / investment thereof. People are tossing around numbers like a $10B valuation. Are they worth $10B? Or $5B or $15B? Well, I dunno. But, for giggles, let’s look at some market caps of other companies, as of today, Oct. 12, 2007:

So, I didn’t put in too many other $10B companies, as it was a bit difficult to find $10B companies. Nonetheless, just poking around was fascinating… Northwest, a reasonable airline with lots of planes and such is under $4B. Southwest, probably one of the top airlines in the US, is just under $11B, as is Nordstrom’s. So a $10B Facebook is roughly equivalent to Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom’s. A $10B Facebook is roughly worth half of Ford or General Motors. Yeah. If you were wondering why so many people are skeptical of the valuation, well, now you know one reason… Facebook doesn’t look at all like other $10B companies. However, the key question is whether it can boost one of Microsoft or Google in the search wars, which are going to get really expensive really quickly.

Now, on the flip side, things get kinda interesting… Amazon is worth $37B, and Yahoo, for all their troubles, is still a bit more at $37B (and to think MS was rumored to be offering $50B for Yahoo!). Looking up at Google, they’re worth $194B now, which is just a bit more than Wal-Mart, and 2/3 of the value of Microsoft. 2/3 of the Windows / Office empire. Wow.

This entry was posted 1 year ago on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 12:05 am and is filed under Search and Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.