Facebook said Wednesday it expects to pay between $3 billion and $5 billion in costs related to the Federal Trade Commission’s continuing investigation of the social media company’s privacy practices. The penalty would be the highest the FTC has ever levied against a tech company, the closest being a $22.5 million against Google in 2012 to settle charges that the company misrepresented privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser.

And it would compare with fines in the billions of dollars levied by the European Union against Apple and Google in the past couple of years. It also would be in line with penalties against major banks, such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, by U.S. regulators over their role in the financial crisis. (See chart above).