You will never build a company on the scale of a Facebook or a Google if you sell it along the way.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo - there's a common theme. None of these companies ever sold. By staying independent, they were able to build a great company.
The problem we encountered with Wave at Google was that we became very isolated from the rest of the company. And in the time that it took us to build Wave, the rest of the company changed direction. I think that has a lot to do with why the product failed.
We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that's something we're proud of.
The turning point for me was realizing that I would learn more at Google, trying to build a company, regardless of whether we failed or succeeded, than I would at any of the other companies I had offers from.
I think Facebook is more for old people and, like, adults. My parents use Facebook. I honestly have never been on Facebook.
If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.
Facebook is like the Internet: a large company and an application. Bitcoin is a protocol for decentralisation, so you could build a decentralised company on top of it, a stock market. It's an Internet of ownership, so it's not quite a direct comparison.
In the past, the British had signally failed to build an effective structure of royal authority and administration in their American colonies. As a result, no possibility existed of soothing and winning over influential and talented Americans, in the way that influential and talented Scotsmen were increasingly being won over, by giving them increased access to state employment.
If you can build a Facebook page and channel the audience to your website, you can generate revenue via PPC advertisement networks like Google Adwords, Taboola, Yahoo! Bing Network, AdRoll, 7Search, etc.
The original dream of Facebook Platform was to enable developers to build experiences that were social at their core, like Facebook Photos, without having to build their own standalone social network.
Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community.
Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook.
As an investor, I'm always looking for the next great American company. Who will create tomorrow's Twitter, Facebook, or Google?
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
Google likely never cared if Google+ 'won' as a competitor to Facebook (though if it did, that would have been a nice bonus). All that mattered, in the end, was whether Plus became the connective tissue between all of Google's formerly scattered services. And in a few short years, it's fair to say it has.