Steve Ballmer wanted to buy Facebook for $24bn Getty Images
Microsoft's former chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has said he once made an offer to buy Facebook.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Ballmer said when he was the CEO he approached Mark Zuckerberg with a proposal to buy Facebook for $24bn (�19.6bn) when it was "itsy bitsy". But Zuckerberg declined the offer. Ballmer said: "I respect that. You have to have a willing seller." Founded in 2004, the social network has 1.13 billion daily active users and 1.71 billion monthly users as of 30 June.
According to The Facebook Effect, a book by Fortune editor David Kirkpatrick, when Facebook was a startup, at least 10 companies tried to buy the social media platform. They are Google, Viacom, MySpace, Yahoo, AOL and Friendster. But Zuckerberg turned all the offers down.Facebook currently has a market value of about $374bn, with Zuckerberg being the fourth richest person in the world having a net worth of $56.6bn, according to Forbes. A latest disclosure made by a regulatory filing suggests Facebook spent a staggering $12.5m in the past three years providing security to Zuckerberg, $4.26m in 2015 alone.
Microsoft was one of them. "Why don't we just buy you for $15bn?" Ballmer reportedly asked Zuckerberg in 2007.
Kirkpatrick in the book explained: "Microsoft [would] acquire a small stake in Facebook at a $15bn valuation. Then, Microsoft would have the option, every six months, to buy another 5% of Facebook. A complete takeover of the company would take five to seven years." The acquisition never happened, although Microsoft bought 1.6% share of Facebook for about $250m.
Ballmer, who was Microsoft's CEO from 2000 to 2014, also spiked rumours about a Twitter deal saying he never wanted to buy it. Earlier speculation suggested Ballmer and Saudi Arabia's prince Al-waleed Bin-Talal, the major shareholders in Twitter, were interested in buying the microblogging company.