1) Employees are not a metric of a company's value. It's like measuring a program's value by lines of code.
2) The comparison is completely irrelevant:
a) Facebook is a software-only internet startup that has the serious potential of eventually being the biggest web company ever.
b) Hitachi is a mature hardware company and manufacturer dealing in a market with rather slim margins and serious credible competition (well, now it's just the two companies with decent spinning-disk-drives.)
That's really not any more appropriate a comparison than comparing Facebook to, say, Toyota.
You make a few valid points, however I think scrrr's reaction is justified as well.
a) Facebook is a software-only internet startup that has the serious potential of eventually being the biggest web company ever.
Ignoring the hyperbole for a moment I'd argue that there's still a gap between "has the potential" and "is today". According to wikipedia Hitachi is the third largest technological company by revenue as of 2009. Hitachi does state as profit about the same amount that facebook states as revenue.
Hitachi has also been around 94 years longer than facebook. That suggests there's probably not too much untapped potential remaining. But it also suggests that Hitachi is less likely to suddenly disappear overnight only because some teenager accidentally created a "hitachi-killer" in his basement...
Note for those confused by this conversation, the original headline implied that WD acquired all of Hitachi for $4.3 billion. Hitachi had revenue of $96 billion in 2010, so that would have been a pretty sweet deal. :)
1) Employees are not a metric of a company's value. It's like measuring a program's value by lines of code.
2) The comparison is completely irrelevant:
a) Facebook is a software-only internet startup that has the serious potential of eventually being the biggest web company ever.
b) Hitachi is a mature hardware company and manufacturer dealing in a market with rather slim margins and serious credible competition (well, now it's just the two companies with decent spinning-disk-drives.)
That's really not any more appropriate a comparison than comparing Facebook to, say, Toyota.