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Users and pageviews are _potential_ assets. You cannot sell either of those things, but you might find ways of making them produce money.


There are many other intangible assets that produce money but are not easily sell-able: Trademarks, human capital, trade-secrets, other intellectual property, etc.


All of these would be in Ford's side without any doubt. Maybe profit-per-capita is the single benchmark they'd clearly lose at, and the fact that their workforce is largely unionized, which is a serious risk in times of hardship (they'd find themselves unable to cut expenses significantly, as it has happened many times in the past).

Ford vs Google might be a close one in terms of IP - hard to compare across industries though - but vs Facebook it's quite one-sided for Ford.




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