Buying the browser Opera for a billion? No, acquiring another technology ‘Face’ for an estimated $100 million to $1 billion? Wait, they’re going to build a Smartphone (from scratch) right? Lots of directions / options… grasping at ideas… seeing what sticks on the wall? And, not as flush with cash as they were reportedly valued at… Facebook’s stock keeps getting hammered (clearly, an issue as well as internal distraction now as it is only human-nature that a lot of ‘paper-millionaires’ therein will be focused on the roller coaster that is their ticker price).
Aside from all of these issues / variables; building their own Smartphone smacks of a move that’s partially naive; partially foolish; partially full of hubris and perhaps even clueless (unless they have a major coup up their sleeve that they’re going to spring on the marketplace).
Of course, there is always the matter of buying Opera for a (reported) price of $1 billion (which begs the question: why exactly?) Finally, buying a face-recognition technology (whilst alluding to Minority Report) will also in all probability result in legal issues regarding privacy (and potential lawsuits that’ll further distract the firm). Long story short; Facebook’s IPO ‘splash’ was certainly short-lived (putting it mildly). A continued welcome to the world of being publicly-traded…
What’s next: Z gets ousted in a nasty proxy battle? Stay tuned; the market and their shareholders are certainly doing so no matter how demoralizing their post-IPO fizzle must be / feel…
(Source) Reuters: http://goo.gl/1hgrS