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Ranking Web Giants By Office Chairs

Quarterly revenue is one way to rank Silicon Valley’s top companies. Another, as Mercury News shows us, is Santa Clara County’s annual "business personal property" list. This past year’s tax data -- which tracks the total value of a company's computers, furniture and other business equipment -- reveals that Google and Apple both ranked among the top four companies for the first time, trailing only Cisco and Lockheed Martin. Google, for one, spent more than $154 million on computers and business equipment during the past year -- the county's biggest value increase in dollars.

Yet, “Facebook's one-year rise relative to other valley companies “is probably unprecedented," county Assessor Larry Stone says. Records show that the social network spent at least $116 million on business equipment -- “an eye-popping spree that was nearly three times more than the previous year,” Mercury News notes. Regarding the list, Stone says: “It really is the history of the business cycle in Silicon Valley … "Silicon Valley is an idea -- it isn't a product.”

Read the whole story at Mercury News »

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