Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once offered to buy Facebook; here’s what Mark Zuckerberg said to the $24 billion deal

Microsoft, a long time back, wanted to buy ‘itsy-bitsy’ Facebook for $24 billion. In an interview with CNBC, former Microsoft CEO informed that he had approached Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and also said that he never wanted to buy Twitter. Recalling that Zuckerberg had ‘said no’ and that he ‘respects it since you have to be a willing seller’. As it turns out, the decision did not turn out bad for Facebook. Facebook at this moment is sailing fast with a market value of around $374 billion. Zuckerberg is currently the fifth richest person in the world, according to Forbes list and has a net worth of nearly $56 billion. In the same list, Ballmer sits at the 23rd position with a net worth of $28.3 billion.

Years ago , when Facebook was not that big, and according to Ballmer, it was ‘itsy bitsy’, he offered to make it a Microsoft company for $23 billion. 60-year-old Steve Ballmer served as CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He now owns the Los Angeles Clippers and has made investments in the popular social networking site Twitter. Ballmer was recently in the news because of speculations of him being a potential buyer for Twitter but in the interview, he said that he never planned to buy the company. Before this rumours were doing the rounds that Ballmer and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal were interested in making a bid. Both of them are major Twitter shareholders.

It would be interesting to think whether Facebook would have been a strategic fit for Microsoft, yet it is an undeniable fact the Mark Zuckerberg and his team took the right decision. When Ballmer was asked which would be the best company to acquire Twitter, he said that Google would be the ideal company.

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