Google's mission? Organize the world's information. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's mission? Underpants. A very brave tipster answered our call to forward us screenshots of brain-eating Ballmer's actual Facebook profile. Which, of course, is a thousand times better, and stranger, than our fictional profile. By the way, any other powerful Facebook friends whose illusions about privacy you want to violate? Send us more screenshots. Here's Ballmer's.

Stanford student Sean Anderson was the guy who gave Larry Page the name of his search engine and company:

Google's Sergey Brin is bummed. MySpace slackers-in-chief Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe probably couldn't taste their breakfast this morning either. It's the day after Microsoft and Facebook's announcement and while we know for the pair it was a salesman's win-win-win, somebody's got to be the lose-lose-loser. But cheer up, Google and MySpace, the verdict is in and it ain't you.

Microsoft, in case you'd forgotten, remains gigantic. It reported revenue of $13.8 billion for its September quarter, up 27 percent over the same period last year, with operating income of $5.9 billion. In other words, it made more money in profits than Google took in as revenues. Give it a couple of quarters, and it could buy the rest of Facebook just with the cash gushing out of its Windows and Office franchises. [Microsoft PressPass]

In case you missed the whole hullabaloo about Microsoft taking a $240 million stake in Facebook, CNBC has the 15-second version. Tech pundits with a bad case of blogorrhea could take notes from the cable network's brevity.

With a $240 million dollar investment in new best friend Facebook sealed, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is probably enjoying an afterglow of congratulatory pokes on the social network. We don't know. The chief executive has maintained a profile on Facebook for some time, but strangely, hasn't reciprocated my request to be his friend. So we're left to imagine what that profile might look like. Anyone got a screenshot of the real one? Send it in.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster — who, incidentally, has a fake blog, which, we're told, is much more amusing than the real Gene — raised his price target on Apple to $250 a share, up from $225. At $250, Apple's market cap would be $218 billion — higher than Google. After that, tech-stock comparisons are hard to find until we get to Microsoft, currently at just over $300 billion. Apple would need a share price of $350 to top that. BUY BUY BUY! [MacDailyNews]

"[Microsoft's] $240 million investment in Facebook values the social-networking Web site at 500 times its estimated 2007 earnings of $30 million. To put a valuation like that into perspective, if you slapped it on General Electric, the industrial conglomerate would have a market cap of $11 trillion, just $1 trillion short of the total U.S. GDP." What brilliant analysis! Because we all know GE is growing 2.8 percent a week, just like Facebook. [Deal Journal]

Yesterday, some of you Vista-using, registry-repairing, bug-ignoring Microsoft lovers weren't impressed when I reported Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's secret plans to eat Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's brains. Come on. The guy's a thug, and it's only going to get worse because his psych-out tactics are clearly working elsewhere.

Internal memos offer, if not juicy gossip, telling insight into the character of an organization. Not so with the missive Microsoft lead negotiator Kevin Johnson sent around to explain his Facebook triumph. It's just more "win-win-win" blather that you'd expect from a salesman. Johnson tells coworkers the deal will demonstrate to advertisers that Microsoft is a winner and that for publishers "it is further evidence of Microsoft's commitment to long-term innovation." I'm sure the thousands of geeks in Microsoft's R&D labs are stewing over that line — not that they've come up with anything even vaguely as cool as Facebook. But whatever. We know the real reason Johnson sent the memo. To get this reply from Ballmer — the CEO's actual words: "Great job you really pulled this together unbelievably." Cha-ching!

Maybe Google cofounder Sergey Brin is feeling a little touchy. Yesterday, while Microsoft and Facebook consummated their deal with a very public "win-win-win" lovefest, Brin, an internal champion of the Facebook deal, was stuck with 300 financial analysts and press at Google Analyst Day. His immediate reaction to losing out to Microsoft?

How fast is Facebook growing? It's hardly an academic question. In a conference call today, Microsoft executive Kevin Johnson cited Facebook's growth rate as a justification for investing $240 million in Facebook at a staggering $15 billion valuation. He talked about projections for Facebook's user base, currently 49 million, and revenue per user that gets you there. The problem? Johnson's math may be based on outdated assumptions.

You can tell that Facebook's Owen Van Natta and Microsoft's Kevin Johnson are sales guys. In a conference call announcing that Microsoft and Facebook had struck a long-expected investment and ads deal, both had the "win-win-win" patter down, along with nonanswers to hard questions. In his live coverage of the call, Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka has a rundown of the dodges Van Natta and Johnson offered. After the jump, the big questions still hovering over Microsoft and Facebook's $240 million deal.

Microsoft is rumored to have completed a deal to acquire a stake in Facebook and expand its current advertising deal. And Facebook PR director Brandee Barker even confirmed the news, if inadvertently. And now, we're already hearing rumors of how exactly Microsoft plans to stir things up on the social network's website.

Is Mark Zuckerberg in charge at Facebook? That's the first question I asked myself when I saw the press release Microsoft and Facebook issued. Sure, he got his $15 billion valuation — but only $240 million in cash, a less than 2 percent stake. Facebook's investors, in other words, asserted control and prevented Microsoft from diluting their stake. On the other hand, Microsoft, crucially, will remain Facebook's exclusive third-party ad network. It's telling, I think, that Zuckerberg didn't put his name on the press release. Instead, recently demoted executive Owen Van Natta got the money quote. Why not Zuck? I don't think this is the deal he wanted.

Oh, Facebook has a deal to announce? Really? Don't rely on rumors. For confirmation of Facebook's as-yet unannounced deal with Microsoft, look no further than ... Facebook. Brandee Barker, the charmingly indiscreet head of Facebook PR, has just added Adam Sohn, who heads up global sales and marketing PR at Microsoft, as a friend. Just buddies? I think not. But I'm sure writing up the press release announcing Microsoft's investment and ad deal will make them fast friends, indeed.

News.com's Beyond Binary blog reports that Microsoft and Facebook are close to a deal that could value Facebook as high as $15 billion. If true, it will be a heartbreaking outcome for the Google team that poured weeks into making a deal happen. But for Google itself? Not so much. We hear CEO Eric Schmidt has been a skeptic of the deal from the beginning, and he can go back to talking up Orkut, Google's big-in-Brazil social network, and Google's ad deal with MySpace. For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who bowed and scraped in multiple meetings to make a deal happen? Well, he'll get to write a big check, and subsidize Facebook's ever-growing ad network. One outside possibility: What if Facebook got rights to sell targeted ads when Facebook users visit Microsoft-owned websites? That would be the ultimate cherry on top.

So typical for New Yorkers to think that everything comes down to money. The New York Post's late-to-the-game article on Facebook this morning had just one interesting, unreported tidbit among the rehash: The stakes in Microsoft and Google's race to invest have been raised to as high as $1.5 billion — or 10 percent of the company, valuing it at $15 billion. Frankly, I'm skeptical. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be stupid not to take all the money he can off the table, his outside investors — a list which includes Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, and Accel Partners — don't want their stakes diluted that much. Selling off that large a chunk of Facebook would shrink their collective holdings — as much as 27 percent of the company, we hear — down to less than a quarter. That's just one reason why money doesn't matter as much as the Wall Street set would have you believe.

Good to know the New York Post reads Valleywag. A story today reports that Facebook will strike a deal within two days. Down the stretch, it's looking like the race is between Google and Microsoft, with Google's Tim Armstrong, as we reported, leading the deal. The Post says Armstrong has been driving up the price to scare off Ballmer & Co., with a stake as high as 10 percent, worth up to $1.5 billion, on the table. (Photo by Jeff Kubina)

The Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind Firefox, just released its 2006 financial statement. It turns out Moz's for-profit arm is making millions from a deal with Google. 85 percent of its revenue — some $56 million — came from the Google search box that is the default on every Firefox install. Google also provides users for Firefox via a pay-to-download program with Google's AdSense program and the Google Pack — a collection of apps including Google Earth, Adobe Reader, Skype and Firefox. Firefox is generally posited as David against Goliath — Microsoft's Internet Explorer. But really, Firefox is more of the slingshot, wielded by the David of Mountain View as Google and Microsoft fight Browser Wars 2.0. The latest data marks Firefox at 14.9 percent market share against IE's still-dominant 77.9 percent.