I don't know. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have wanted to raise $100billion. What would they do with it except buy back stock after a crash? Apple can't thin

I don't know. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have wanted to raise $100billion. What would they do with it except buy back stock after a crash? Apple can't think of any use for their $100b in cash, and they're a hardware company with sprawling operations on three continent, and a capital-intensive retail division on four! (They're doing buybacks and dividends with their cash.) By contrast, the amount FB actually raised, which is considerably less than that, they're acting like they need or have good use for. This is just a theory, of course, and perhaps you are right that Facebook would have been HAPPY to raise a hundred billion dollars it has no use for. (Perhaps as part of stock dumping by big shareholders, who don't care what happens after this.) The above is just a guess. But I want to repeat my reason for it, which is that I have been extremely impressed by the expansiveness of Facebook's vision to date, and its execution on it. If they do have something big in mind, it's not unprecedented for them to be able to execute on it; I have some faith in their ability to do so, versus lots of other companies that suddenly realize they can think a lot bigger now that they have all this cash, but have no record of doing so. We'll find out if there's anything like this that Facebook has in mind soon enough...