Facebook: home (at last) for the holidays
Since it was created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has moved its homebase around many times, relocating to the West coast and bouncing from building to building in Silicon Valley as its ranks have grown.
Now the company has finally settled down. Facebook said it had completed the move into its new corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, with the final wave of employees reporting for duty at the new office Monday morning.
Following the standard script for Web company “new office” announcements, Facebook proudly catalogued the various perks and cool design motifs on offer at its new digs in a blog post. Among the highlights: “micro kitchens;” exposed ductwork; breakaway “cozie” spaces with couches; and hallways coated in special chalkboard paint (one imagines engineers abruptly stopping mid-walk to passionately scrawl some cryptic formula on the wall, a la Goodwill Hunting).
Free dry-cleaning, a fitness center and two full-service cafes will also be available (the company is currently finishing construction on a central courtyard connecting the 10 buildings that is designed to mimic an urban street). For some reason, Facebook even made a point of noting that on-site doctors will also be part of the 57-acre campus.
The new flagship headquarters, which can accommodate far more than the 2,000 Facebook employees currently working there, marks the first of a few looming coming-of-age moments for the world’s No.1 Internet social networking site.
Facebook is expected to IPO next year, in an stock market debut that will mint at least one thousand millionaires with money to burn on new homes, cars and adventure.
Of course, spending all that money requires leaving the mothership, something which isn’t always easy at a company famous for occasional “lockdowns,” in which employees are known to work through the night for weeks at a time.
from The Great Debate:
Sun software is the tail wagging the dog
-- Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
When Oracle agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in April, the headlines made much of the software maker's decision to enter the computer business 30 years late. At less than 10 per cent of sales, Sun's software business seemed an afterthought.
But Sun's software is now center stage after European competition regulators said on Thursday that they would withhold approval for the deal until they finish probing the impact of the Oracle-Sun merger on the database software market. The decision means the transaction faces at least a four-month delay, pushing it into early next year.
Any delay is costly for Oracle. Sun's sales have plunged as key financial, government and communications customers have held back purchases of computers and storage until Oracle is able to clarify its long-run commitment to Sun hardware and software products.
The commission is debating whether, or under what conditions, to allow Oracle to acquire Sun's MySQL database software. Given that the business brings in only $100 million in quarterly revenue, less than 1/25th of Sun sales, the easy way out would be for Oracle to jettison MySQL. However, that would be a mistake.
MySQL is a free, or low-cost, database that powers the vast majority of the world's hottest Web sites, blogs and open-source businesses, including Facebook, Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. At issue is the fact that Oracle is already the world's biggest supplier of database software, the underpinning for many of the world's biggest information storehouses.
MySQL is the alternative to Oracle and its main rivals, IBM and Microsoft, which between them generate most of the world's database sales.
Sun CEO takes stage, ignores IBM deal talk
What do you do if your company is reported to be involved in an $8 billion acquisition and you’re already scheduled to give a big speech?******If you’re Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, you honor the commitment and then make a swift exit.******The pony-tailed CEO took the lectern on Wednesday at the Open Source Business Conference at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, his first public appearance since reports surfaced last week that IBM and Sun were in acquisition talks (reports that neither company has so far commented on).******While the putative deal has produced endless column inches of analysis and speculation in the business media, it had no place in Schwartz’s remarks. Instead, Schwartz spoke about Sun’s recently-released cloud computing service, largely rehashing talking points he made in an earlier series of blog posts.******The most intriguing nugget, for those running Schwartz’s comments through the filter of an IBM deal, was his characterization of Sun’s open source operating system as the “single most valuable” part of the company, as it represents the key building block for Sun to play in high-margin, adjacent markets like networking.******When his 30 minutes were up, Schwartz slipped behind a curtain and retreated backstage, conveniently avoiding any reporters in the audience eager for ask him about the IBM deal.******And when a couple of reporters greeted him at the hotel’s exit, Schwartz proved equally aloof – the surprised CEO was good-mannered enough to shake hands, but didn’t break his stride, or his silence, to answer a question about the progress of the IBM deal. Maybe next time…
