Just to put a number on it Facebook was spending an estimated $50 Million a year just to lease space for its data centers in September (http://www.datacenterkno

Just to put a number on it Facebook was spending an estimated $50 Million a year just to lease space for its data centers in September (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/16/facebook-50-million-a-year-on-data-centers/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/16/faceb...). Assume that more than doubles due to the cost of moving into other countries and their rising userbase. In that context $500 million doesn't even get them to through the IPO (Zuckerberg has said he won't even consider an IPO until 2012 at the earliest) Again that's just space. Not employees, hardware, etc...