Facebook isn’t just popular with its 500 million or so users.
According to the copy of The Facebook Effect, Fortune editor David Kirkpatrick’s brilliantly-reported new book about the company’s founding, Facebook has also always been very popular with the M&A suits.
Below is the list of all the companies that swung and missed–
1. In June 2004, an unnamed financier offered $10 million
2. Friendster also tried to buy Facebook
3. In the summer of 2004, Google came knocking
4. In March 2005, Viacom plopped $75 million on the table
5. Before selling to News Corp in 2005, MySpace wanted to buy its upstart rival
6. A half year later, MySpace’s new parent company News Corp had the same idea
7. Viacom came back in Fall 2005
8. NBC met with Facebook in 2005
9. Desperate Viacom came back one last time in 2006
10. In June 2006, Yahoo decided it had to have Facebook
11. In 2006, AOL also took a hard look at Facebook
12. Yahoo came back in fall 2006
13. Tim Armstrong convinced Google’s board to let him bid for Facebook in 2007
14. "Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?," Microsoft’s CEO asked Mark Zuckerberg
[via] Business Insider
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