Facebook Has a Bullseye on Its Back

Mark Cuban has some good news and some bad news for Facebook. Good news: It's the “new internet,” our go-to place for at-work entertainment. “Everything that the net was 5 or more years ago, Facebook is today,” the entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks' owner writes on his blog, and it'll soon take over every other site with its latest platform innovations. Now the bad news: Anything that big looks like a threat to Apple and Google.

That means Facebook desperately needs to create its own mobile OS, or Apple could easily ban it the way it banned Flash. But Facebook doesn't have the cash to develop something like that. “Enter Microsoft. Already a shareholder. Already with a mobile and desktop operating system,” and, more important, enough cash to pay as much as $20 billion for Facebook. “It's straight out of the Microsoft playbook. If you can't beat them or outlast them, buy them.”