It’s a happy new year indeed for Mark Zuckerberg and everyone with financial ties to Facebook.  Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies have invested $500 million in the company, according to a new report, and in doing so, valued it at $50 billion.

A couple points of reference: it was only 38 months ago that Microsoft drew laughter by paying $240 million for a 1.2 percent stake in Facebook, valuing it at $15 billion.  And Yahoo and eBay just have market caps of about $21.7 billion and $36.3 billion, respectively.

Sorry, Google fans, but from a financial perspective, the search giant seems to have lost some of its luster.  Goldman Sachs hasn’t come close to suggesting that anyone sell their stock – and is in fact still recommending that people buy more – but at the same time, the firm has removed Google from its "Conviction Buy" list.

Investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs is more or less giving up on Google’s Nexus One.  A note Goldman Sachs published this week indicates that it’s cut its 2010 sales forecast by a whopping 71.4 percent.

It seems like every week there’s another example of how the Internet has toppled business models that have been in place longer than the Internet itself.

Control is not really possible when there are so many ways to pirate or undercut sales. The newspaper, music, movie, and now images market are changing drastically (and I love to read Seth Godin’s take on the changes).

Getty Images, the world’s largest supplier of pictures and video to the media is for sale.

Companies routinely receive three, five, or even ten million dollars in various funding rounds; reporting on it kind of dulls you to those huge amounts.  But iCrossing, a “global digital marketing company,” has just received $62 million, and that’s definitely worth a closer look.

Another 5.3 million shares of GOOG, worth about $2.1 billion at current valuation, should help smooth the company’s entry into the S&P 500 index.