, Columnist
Facebook Joins the Big Spenders
Spiraling outlays could become harder to justify if revenue growth slows significantly.
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Facebook Inc. has spent less than five years as a public company, yet its market value is already in the global big leagues. It's now also entering the big leagues of spending, a position that bears watching.
The three highest-spending operators of web and cloud computing services -- Google parent company Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- collectively dole out more than $20 billion in cash each year to buy computer equipment and run the digital data centers that are the engines of the world's internet hangouts. Facebook is joining this capital expenditure superpower team.