GigaOM

Facebook, the Palo Alto-based social network, has grand ambitions (or delusions) of becoming the company that prints “money” like Google has been doing in the search-and-find economy. Unfortunately their first attempt, Beacon, turned out to be a bit of a disaster. So what does Mark Zuckerberg do? Hire Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s global VP of sales and operations, as Facebook’s chief operating officer.

I wonder how Sandberg will work with a founder who likes to do things his way. An unkind person would say Zuckerberg is in love with the sound of this own voice. Even though some of his investors were suggesting he hire Sandberg, he tells Kara Swisher that it was his idea…much like his claim that media changes “once every hundred years.”

That aside, I wonder how much money he had to pay Sheryl who was (I am guessing) seriously compensated at Google. With a $15 billion valuation, there is no way an executive as savvy as Sheryl would have settled for over-inflated options. In other words, she must have received restricted stock — a lot of it, and I mean a lot of it.

She is going to be worth it: Given how quickly the company is spending money, it needs adult supervision and at the same time someone who can handle Madison Avenue after the Beacon debacle. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Sheryl shouldn’t get too comfortable — look what happened to Owen Van Natta.