6 ms·

So we basically are seeing that google was "right" from their point of view in securing a mobile OS. Facebook maybe thought this day would never arrive and cou

So we basically are seeing that google was "right" from their point of view in securing a mobile OS. Facebook maybe thought this day would never arrive and could have avoided that by doing their own mobile OS too. Well, maybe they declared this battle as lost and focused on the next one: VR. Problem is that VR took too long to arrive and death on mobile can kill Facebook?

dazc 5y ago
'...and death on mobile can kill Facebook?' Seriously wondering what impact this would have on the world other than a positive one?
- motoboi 5y ago
  Probably not positive for Facebook stock owner's world. But I personally agree with you. My world will be better without it.
- kaybe 5y ago
  I'm not sure, going to a more monopolistic world still seems bad to me, even if I like and trust this particular player a little bit less than the others.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Facebook is a monopoly, in most parts of the world. I know some would claim that Twitter is a competitor, but I don't really see the two having much in common, other than being social networks.
spoonjim 5y ago
Facebook realized that no amount of money was going to will a third mobile OS into existence. cf. Microsoft.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  They didn't even find enough users for their Android "launcher" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home A Facebook phone probably would give even more critical reception ...
  - Sunspark 5y ago
    Years ago a Facebook phone was planned. Its differentiating feature as I recall it was the "like" button.
    - johannes1234321 5y ago
      Nowadays it would be "share on insta" But it's still interesting how they initially were late on mobile, with all the FBML embedded things (Zynga games) not working on mobile and things moving from their "platform" to mobile apps, but I assume for now with WhatsApp, Insta and messenger they "own" a notable amount of mobile screen time. Missing the underlying platform of course gives them "neutrality" that they can be on all OSes (till the privacy enforcements make it harder for them) instead of having to differentiate the Facebook phone from iPhone.
    - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
      https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/9/4206176/htc-first-review-facebook-phone https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/9/4206176/htc-first-review-f...
- toast0 5y ago
  Microsoft actually had a winning formula. Make cheap phones that work alright. And they were getting market share with later wp7 and throughout wp8. Between wp8 and WM10, they merged the phone team with the regular OS team, and eliminated (or at least gutted) their QA teams, and they decided to target the high end market only. There were no low spec WM10 phones, and there hadn't been many high end buyers anyway, so who was going to buy WM10? And upgrading to WM10, when available, was often a bad experience. Also, mobile Edge had a nicer renderer than mobile IE, but it was sooooo much worse UX (laggy, slow, navigation buttons went into some sort of button press queue to be resolved seconds later). When you've driven away app developers, ruining the browser isn't a good choice. So, it's not that you needed more money (although I'm sure it would help), you also need to not abandon the market niche you found in search of an unobtainable, but potentially more lucrative one, and you need to make releases be consistently better each time. (It would also help if one of the big players stumbled, but you can't count on that).
intricatedetail 5y ago
Let's hope Google will also get banned from collecting data. It's time This advertising predatory business ends.
akmarinov 5y ago
VR's probably not going to be bigger or even equivalent to mobile, so they should've tried harder.
- ska 5y ago
  VR has been 'the next big thing' for a lot of decades now.
- motoboi 5y ago
  I personally believe VR and mainly AR are the next and natural step in personal computing. Ubiquitous computing may be the next step from there. Something like “the world is the computer and you just interact with it”.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Hopefully VR will end up with a more permanent footprint than 3d cinema. It is hard to evaluate VR with just the perception of what we have today and fantasies about how good the tech will be.
  - hakfoo 5y ago
    It feels like VR is 5 years away forever. Realistically, I feel like there are two near-intractible problems for widescale consumer adoption. 1. The space problem. For some experiences, yeah, you can sit in a chair and wear a helmet, but I'd expect many of the more compelling immersive experiences would involve flailing your arms and moving around. That's a recipe for disaster inside a small apartment without dedicated space-- you're gonna trip on something or break something. I seem to recall some designs for an "omnidirectional treadmill" to keep someone contained while giving them more room to roam, but that's a whole different thing to design and perfect. 2. The motion-sickness problem. I'm not sure if tracking will improve to the point where this isn't the factor it is now, but I'd expect some people are going to always have issues because of an conflicting sensory experiences-- the helmet says you're being blasted into hyperspace, but your stomach and legs say you're standing still.
    - 5y ago
bushbaba 5y ago
Question is does google still collect the location data. And are they acting monopolistic here. My understanding is that even the latest version of android phones home your location in real-time. Which google uses itself for ads.
- harikb 5y ago
  > Which google uses itself for ads Do you have a source? Google providing a location-based service for Android OS functionality is different from using it for ads.
  - motoboi 5y ago
    Take a look at recently unsealed documents from court about google location.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    I am extremely skeptical in anything Google states that they aren't using for ads and / or user tracking. There's plentiful of examples proving the opposites and it is littered with "whoopsies". Remember the time they "accidentally" equipped their google street view cars with Wi-Fi scanners? It's old but still is true. That happens to me too every now and then. Or how they see themselves above the law with their Google Analytics opt-out plugin that is the complete opposite of what the GDPR states.
indymike 5y ago
I can live without VR. I'm at a disadvantage without my mobile.
rmsaksida 5y ago
> Problem is that VR took too long to arrive and death on mobile can kill Facebook? Facebook owns the most popular messaging app in the world (WhatsApp) and two of the most popular social networks in the world (Facebook, Instagram). Are they really in trouble because of the Android/iOS changes?
- heymijo 5y ago
  Welcome to Milton Friedman's capitalism. Beat earnings expectations every quarter into perpetuity or watch your share price drop.
- motoboi 5y ago
  People need a phone to use Instagram. Instagram makes money out of ads, not out of its users. So anything that threatens this revenue source can kill Facebook. They can still do ads without tracking, but would that still be a trillion dollar business?
  - polyomino 5y ago
    Yes, but it would be worse for everyone involved
tracerbulletx 5y ago
I don't see why it would kill Facebook. They still have the user profiles and photos with location and all kinds of other valuable signal.
baby 5y ago
I remember that there was a facebook phone, don’t know what happened to it
cardosof 5y ago
I guess that's what happens when you start late. Everyone else has their moats in place and you either 1) start from scratch at hardware level and develop a new phone from the ground up - electronics, OS, utility apps, dev tools or 2) focus on creating the next platform. Both are really high cost, complex, multi-year bets with lots of moving parts and no real hint of consumer adoption/market size until way after the ship's sailed. In my opinion, as a consumer, they're really on the path to make VR happen and their wrist-based tech and Oculus is very promising. What VR still needs, after all those years since it's been accessible to the general public, is a killer app, and one can only guess why no one has developed it yet.
- Duralias 5y ago
  What would the "killer app" even be, you make it sound like it should be very obvious what it would be, but even knowing exactly what it should be, a killer app is still just luck and the right timing. The only app that I could imagine bringing mainstream appeal would be a Ready Player One Oasis kind of thing (I've only seen movie, not read the book), but seeing and testing all the social vr apps we have now, the Oasis is the most fantasy thing about that universe.
  - cardosof 5y ago
    I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, my point is exactly the opposite: since we know commercial VR for quite some time and there's no killer app yet, maybe there won't be a killer app at all unless technology improves so much it'll look like magic (like Ready Player One).
skohan 5y ago
"Kill facebook" might be a tad hyperbolic for a company which basically prints money. "Facebook might be forced to get a haircut on mobile revenue" might be more accurate

dazc 5y ago

'...and death on mobile can kill Facebook?' Seriously wondering what impact this would have on the world other than a positive one?

motoboi 5y ago
Probably not positive for Facebook stock owner's world. But I personally agree with you. My world will be better without it.
kaybe 5y ago
I'm not sure, going to a more monopolistic world still seems bad to me, even if I like and trust this particular player a little bit less than the others.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Facebook is a monopoly, in most parts of the world. I know some would claim that Twitter is a competitor, but I don't really see the two having much in common, other than being social networks.

spoonjim 5y ago

Facebook realized that no amount of money was going to will a third mobile OS into existence. cf. Microsoft.

johannes1234321 5y ago
They didn't even find enough users for their Android "launcher" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home A Facebook phone probably would give even more critical reception ...
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Years ago a Facebook phone was planned. Its differentiating feature as I recall it was the "like" button.
  - johannes1234321 5y ago
    Nowadays it would be "share on insta" But it's still interesting how they initially were late on mobile, with all the FBML embedded things (Zynga games) not working on mobile and things moving from their "platform" to mobile apps, but I assume for now with WhatsApp, Insta and messenger they "own" a notable amount of mobile screen time. Missing the underlying platform of course gives them "neutrality" that they can be on all OSes (till the privacy enforcements make it harder for them) instead of having to differentiate the Facebook phone from iPhone.
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/9/4206176/htc-first-review-facebook-phone https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/9/4206176/htc-first-review-f...
toast0 5y ago
Microsoft actually had a winning formula. Make cheap phones that work alright. And they were getting market share with later wp7 and throughout wp8. Between wp8 and WM10, they merged the phone team with the regular OS team, and eliminated (or at least gutted) their QA teams, and they decided to target the high end market only. There were no low spec WM10 phones, and there hadn't been many high end buyers anyway, so who was going to buy WM10? And upgrading to WM10, when available, was often a bad experience. Also, mobile Edge had a nicer renderer than mobile IE, but it was sooooo much worse UX (laggy, slow, navigation buttons went into some sort of button press queue to be resolved seconds later). When you've driven away app developers, ruining the browser isn't a good choice. So, it's not that you needed more money (although I'm sure it would help), you also need to not abandon the market niche you found in search of an unobtainable, but potentially more lucrative one, and you need to make releases be consistently better each time. (It would also help if one of the big players stumbled, but you can't count on that).

intricatedetail 5y ago

Let's hope Google will also get banned from collecting data. It's time This advertising predatory business ends.

akmarinov 5y ago

VR's probably not going to be bigger or even equivalent to mobile, so they should've tried harder.

ska 5y ago
VR has been 'the next big thing' for a lot of decades now.
motoboi 5y ago
I personally believe VR and mainly AR are the next and natural step in personal computing. Ubiquitous computing may be the next step from there. Something like “the world is the computer and you just interact with it”.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Hopefully VR will end up with a more permanent footprint than 3d cinema. It is hard to evaluate VR with just the perception of what we have today and fantasies about how good the tech will be.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  It feels like VR is 5 years away forever. Realistically, I feel like there are two near-intractible problems for widescale consumer adoption. 1. The space problem. For some experiences, yeah, you can sit in a chair and wear a helmet, but I'd expect many of the more compelling immersive experiences would involve flailing your arms and moving around. That's a recipe for disaster inside a small apartment without dedicated space-- you're gonna trip on something or break something. I seem to recall some designs for an "omnidirectional treadmill" to keep someone contained while giving them more room to roam, but that's a whole different thing to design and perfect. 2. The motion-sickness problem. I'm not sure if tracking will improve to the point where this isn't the factor it is now, but I'd expect some people are going to always have issues because of an conflicting sensory experiences-- the helmet says you're being blasted into hyperspace, but your stomach and legs say you're standing still.
  - 5y ago

bushbaba 5y ago

Question is does google still collect the location data. And are they acting monopolistic here. My understanding is that even the latest version of android phones home your location in real-time. Which google uses itself for ads.

harikb 5y ago
> Which google uses itself for ads Do you have a source? Google providing a location-based service for Android OS functionality is different from using it for ads.
- motoboi 5y ago
  Take a look at recently unsealed documents from court about google location.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I am extremely skeptical in anything Google states that they aren't using for ads and / or user tracking. There's plentiful of examples proving the opposites and it is littered with "whoopsies". Remember the time they "accidentally" equipped their google street view cars with Wi-Fi scanners? It's old but still is true. That happens to me too every now and then. Or how they see themselves above the law with their Google Analytics opt-out plugin that is the complete opposite of what the GDPR states.

indymike 5y ago

I can live without VR. I'm at a disadvantage without my mobile.

rmsaksida 5y ago

> Problem is that VR took too long to arrive and death on mobile can kill Facebook? Facebook owns the most popular messaging app in the world (WhatsApp) and two of the most popular social networks in the world (Facebook, Instagram). Are they really in trouble because of the Android/iOS changes?

heymijo 5y ago
Welcome to Milton Friedman's capitalism. Beat earnings expectations every quarter into perpetuity or watch your share price drop.
motoboi 5y ago
People need a phone to use Instagram. Instagram makes money out of ads, not out of its users. So anything that threatens this revenue source can kill Facebook. They can still do ads without tracking, but would that still be a trillion dollar business?
- polyomino 5y ago
  Yes, but it would be worse for everyone involved

tracerbulletx 5y ago

I don't see why it would kill Facebook. They still have the user profiles and photos with location and all kinds of other valuable signal.

baby 5y ago

I remember that there was a facebook phone, don’t know what happened to it

cardosof 5y ago

I guess that's what happens when you start late. Everyone else has their moats in place and you either 1) start from scratch at hardware level and develop a new phone from the ground up - electronics, OS, utility apps, dev tools or 2) focus on creating the next platform. Both are really high cost, complex, multi-year bets with lots of moving parts and no real hint of consumer adoption/market size until way after the ship's sailed. In my opinion, as a consumer, they're really on the path to make VR happen and their wrist-based tech and Oculus is very promising. What VR still needs, after all those years since it's been accessible to the general public, is a killer app, and one can only guess why no one has developed it yet.

Duralias 5y ago
What would the "killer app" even be, you make it sound like it should be very obvious what it would be, but even knowing exactly what it should be, a killer app is still just luck and the right timing. The only app that I could imagine bringing mainstream appeal would be a Ready Player One Oasis kind of thing (I've only seen movie, not read the book), but seeing and testing all the social vr apps we have now, the Oasis is the most fantasy thing about that universe.
- cardosof 5y ago
  I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, my point is exactly the opposite: since we know commercial VR for quite some time and there's no killer app yet, maybe there won't be a killer app at all unless technology improves so much it'll look like magic (like Ready Player One).

skohan 5y ago

"Kill facebook" might be a tad hyperbolic for a company which basically prints money. "Facebook might be forced to get a haircut on mobile revenue" might be more accurate