Goldman Invests $450m In Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "The news that Goldman has taken a stake in Facebook, the white-hot social networking giant, has tongues wagging from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. As first reported by DealBook, Goldman has invested $450 million in a deal that values Facebook at $50 billion. As part of the deal, Goldman is looking to raise as much as $1.5 billion from its wealthy clients to invest in Facebook alongside the firm."

Re:12 billion bailout

[timeOday]

I am not am not an expert here, but my understanding is Goldman-Sachs was the first bank to repay [cnn.com] TARP (a year and a half ago), and the govt. made 23% interest on it.

Re:Demographic Data

[Low Ranked Craig]

This all makes sense now. This is the real reason California, and likely other states will criminalize using bogus demographic information in your profile. If you do so you are depriving Goldman Sachs of their rightful revenue from selling your personal info, therefore you have defrauded or harmed the corporation. I mean, it's not like Goldman Sachs owns any congress critters or would ever contribute to completely fucking up an economy only to have the government write them a big check for their efforts.

$450 Million = One New Facebook Data Center

[miller60]

The $450 million number from Goldman is interesting because Facebook just announced plans to invest $450 million over the next 5 years in a huge new data center [datacenterknowledge.com] in North Carolina. Facebook's already spending about $50 million a year [datacenterknowledge.com] on leased data center space, and expects to spend about $200 million building its new Oregon server farm. It takes a lot of infrastructure and servers to support 500 million users.

Re:12 billion bailout

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

People seem to leave this part out. They keep screaming about the 'bailouts' and tax payer money being 'wasted'. That money has been, for the most part, repaid, with interest.

Baloney. Of the $550B disbursed, only $230B has been returned [propublica.org] and that doesn't take into account the cost of money for the interim.