Facebook took a formal step toward joining the ranks of other public technology giants after filing for its eagerly anticipated initial public offering. The company filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission today, officially declaring its intent to go public. Facebook plans to raise $5 billion through the IPO, according to the filing. The last major tech IPO was Google’s, which raised $1.9 billion. The S-1 pulls…

Facebook, the social network that changed “friend” from a noun to a verb, is expected to file as early as Wednesday to sell stock on the open market. Its debut is likely to be the most talked-about initial public offering since Google in 2004. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company expects to raise as much as $10 billion, though some accounts say it could be less than that. At $10 billion,…

As it prepares for one of the biggest IPOs ever, Facebook is coming under the same fierce attacks being waged against other big technology companies: patent lawsuits. Last year, Facebook was named as a defendant in 22 lawsuits accusing it of patent infringement, double the number from 2010, according to a Reuters analysis of court documents on legal database Westlaw, a Thomson Reuters unit. Among the lawsuits is one alleging…

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Many investors are expecting Facebook to file papers for an initial public offering sometime later this week. The company, which was founded in a Harvard dorm room less than a decade ago, is expected to be valued at nearly $100 billion by Wall Street. And if these early reports are true this is shaping up to be the biggest Internet IPO ever. “It will be larger than the Google IPO…