Microsoft has confirmed that it tried to buy Facebook for $15 billion

Speaking at a panel entitled “How to get acquired” at the Le Web conference in Paris, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman answered a question from host Loic Le Meur by saying “Yeah we tried to acquire Facebook. Facebook had a lot of similarities to Microsoft back in the day.”

The answer confirms a rumour that was first reported in detail in David Kirkpatrick’s book “The Facebook Effect”

Onstage, Lanman also speculated that Facebook’s valuation could in the future rise as high as Microsoft’s.

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg rejected Steve Ballmer’s offers to buy the social network for $15 billion in 2007. Instead, Microsoft invested $240 million for a small stake, and the two companies now work together in a search partnership.

In The Facebook Effect, Kirkpatrick writes that Ballmer asked Zuckerberg ““Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?” He was told “I don’t want to sell the company unless I can keep control.”

Kirkpatrick goes on, “Ballmer took this reply as a sort of challenge. He went back to Microsoft’s headquarters and concocted a plan intended to acquire Facebook in stages over a period of years to enable Zuckerberg to keep calling the shots. But Zuckerberg rejected all the overtures.”