The rumor came from the publication of “The Facebook effect” by David Kirkpatrick. In it, the author reveals the attempts made by Steve Ballmer to buy Facebook in 2007. Clearly attempts were unsuccessful. But since there was only a rumor, this week at the conference “How to be acquired” in France, was asked to Fritz Lanman (director of acquisitions and strategy) if the story was true. And she said yes.

Lanman said the purchase attempts arose because Microsoft saw that Facebook was a similar company. He also said that it would not be surprising that Facebook ever have the same value as Microsoft in economic terms.

According to the book, Microsoft tried to buy Facebook for $ 15 billion. Steve Ballmer himself would have said to Mark Zuckerberg: “Why do not you buy for $ 15 billion?”. To which Zuckerberg had said “I do not want to sell the company unless it can maintain control.”

The book tells that after this conversation, Ballmer tried to create an appropriate strategy to buy Facebook in stages over several years, Zuckerberg could maintain control, but still ended up rejecting the bids. Finally, Microsoft invested $ 240 million in the network and are now working together on the issue of searches.
Via: Telegraph.co.uk