Facebook is finally going public. It'll be worth about $104 billion when it debuts at $38 a share, and there's guaranteed to be a pop once it starts trading. That means that Facebook — an eight year old company — is worth more than some of the largest, most successful companies in the world that have been around for decades. Even some of the top tech companies that have been on top of Silicon Valley for decades have fallen behind the Web 2.0 wunderkind. Here are some of the most interesting ones:
Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest PC makers in the world, is smaller than Facebook. It's worth $44 billion — less than half of Facebook's titanic $105 billion valuation. HP also just laid off about 25,000 employees.
Facebook barely edges out Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world. Amazon is worth about $100 billion, while Facebook is worth just a smidge more. Amazon's Kindle has been a bit of a bust so far.
* Facebook is four times larger than Dell, another super-giant PC and server maker. Dell has a market cap of about $26 billion. It's still trying to find its way in the post-PC era.
Disney is worth about four-fifths of what Facebook is worth. The owner of ESPN and a ton of other properties is worth about $80 billion. Disney could soon be replaced by Rovio as one of the biggest media properties in the world.
Facebook is worth twice as much as eBay. eBay has a market cap of about $50 billion.
The New York Times, one of the most prestigious content publishers in the world, is a blip compared to Facebook. Sharing is apparently worth 105 times more than some of the best content available on the Internet. The New York Times is worth slightly less than $1 billion. A bunch of New York Times staffers are actually planning to quit.
Starbucks, the coffee chain that literally appears twice on every corner. Starbucks is worth about $40 billion — less than half of Facebook. We hear plenty of horror stories about Starbucks.
Target, a huge big-box retailer similar to a higher-end version of Walmart, is worth less than half of Facebook. Target has a market cap of about $37 billion — well short of Facebook's expected valuation. Target actually raised its guidance this week, raising its value.
Facebook is worth about 10 Nokias put together. Nokia, one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world (not smartphone), is worth about $10 billion. The Nokia Lumia 900 is actually pretty nice, though. Not much of a surprise, though. Facebook is making a world-changing piece of technology, and it also happens to pay its engineers better than most other companies in Silicon Valley — so it attracts the best talent. But Facebook still isn't bigger than the typical tech giants: Google, Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft is worth about $250 billion, while Google is worth $204 billion and Apple is worth about $500 billion.