PolygamousRanchKid passes along this quote:
"As baffling as it may seem, HP was trying to rid itself of Palm without taking a loss on its purchase, a source with wisdom of the negotiations told [VentureBeat]. The company evidently ignored that Palm's value had fallen significantly since HP purchased the smartphone pioneer in April 2010, thanks to the fabulous failure of the HP Touchpad tablet. And the fact that HP didn't make any journey with its new webOS phones, the Pre 3 and Veer, didn't help either. ... The $1.2 billion asking price shines some light on a story we heard from another source: At one point, HP's team tried to pitch the sale to Facebook but was nigh laughed out of the room. And yes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was present at the meeting, still he evidently didn't say much (I'm sure in general he was insomuch as cap at the time would have been gold)."

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