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Comment by og1 | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, Microsoft using Facebook connect and not their Passport system, interesting.

Seriously, it's time for MS to just buy Facebook. I really don't get why they didn't snag it a year or two ago. They tried to spend 3x as much as it would have taken (probably 2x now) to buy Facebook in order to buy Yahoo. Even if Facebook never monetizes as well directly as Yahoo (which it quite probably will) it'd be worth more in the grand scheme of things.

Facebook connect is everything that Passport tried (and largely failed) to be. Yahoo+Bing is still only bordering on relevant in search, FB owns social networking.

Put it this way, MSFT shares would rise greatly on the news of a Facebook acquisition.

I'm not quite so sure share price would rise if they bought FB. Why? FB is in no way related to any of Microsoft's core competencies. They would be much better off buying companies that make online collaboration tools in order to capture lost revenue from lost Office sales. How would FB help their bottom line? Ad sales are nice, but at the end of the day MS is a company that makes software - specifically Windows and Office. They should be focused on buying companies that complement/replace that revenue stream.

The problem is that Windows and Office have little long-term potential as profitable products. So what do you do when your core competencies become obsolete? You have to get new ones. You could try really hard to learn new ones, but when you have the money you can also just buy them...

People have been saying that for over a decade about Windows and Office, and they've kept chugging along. I have a strong feeling the same will be true of the next decade.

Facebook is a company that makes software. It's also a platform on which much software is developed. Seems quite fitting to me.

Facebook won't sell though. I'm pretty sure MS would love to buy them if they could, but heavily investing was a good compromise.

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