We now know that negotiations between Apple and Facebook broke down over plans to use the latter's Facebook Connect in the former's new Ping music social network. However, Business Insider has dug up more details, claiming that the two companies were in talks for as long as 18 months before Ping's launch, trying to thrash out an agreement. It seems Apple CEO Steve Jobs' claim that the dealbreaker was Facebook's “onerous terms” may have been true, too. “Working with Facebook as a large company is challenging at this stage, very similar to mid-late-90s Microsoft,” says one source. Which is to say that it plays nicely with smaller startups, but is an increasingly tough negotiator with bigger companies who might be rivals.
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