Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
with former Microsoft evangelist (source: Robert Scoble)

Summary: The marriage of Facebook and Microsoft goes further not just in the financial sense but also in the technical sense

IN our previous writings about Facebook we pointed out that Microsoft tried buying Facebook, but instead, Microsoft is just receiving special access to Facebook's data. As a shareholder of Facebook, Microsoft receives a lot of favours from this Web site.

Web services such as Facebook are being compared to "governments" in the following new post from a well-known VC.

Web Services as Governments

[...]

Apple, Facebook, and Twitter are all companies operating in a global economy under the laws of one or more countries, but thinking of them as profit driven entities, making things in competition with other companies doesn't really help. A for profit company is expected to maximize returns for its shareholders. In that light, Facebook's move to control the economic activity on its platform through Facebook Credits makes perfect sense, but I was not convinced it was the right thing for them to do.

Microsoft Emil wrote about Microsoft's intensified relationship with Facebook several days ago:

When Bing started serving up Twitter real-time search results eight months ago, Microsoft also announced a global partnership with Facebook, but refused to give a launch date.

Pamela Jones from Groklaw added: "I wonder if that explains recent Facebook events?" This is also covered in [1, 2, 3]. Microsoft doesn't need to spend money acquiring Facebook, not anymore anyway (Microsoft can hardly afford it, either). Microsoft can just use Facebook like it uses Yahoo! and Novell, for example. ⬆