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The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

474 points by nextstep 14y ago

gfosco 14y ago
It is unfortunate they are both scary companies. They both know too much about their users, and their users connections. Even if you don't have a Facebook account, there is probably still some evidence of you in their system. Unlike Facebook, it would be pretty hard to not use Google at all, but it's at least possible to use their services and remain unidentified. Photos are over-rated, but tell that to the ~500 million people stalking each other on Facebook. Glass is an incredible vision into the future of computing, or a chilling vision of the future where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance.
- eitally 14y ago
  The fact of the matter is that most people are less concerned about personal privacy and data security than they are maintaining social relationships, so while I don't disagree with your premise I would argue that your point is fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I fully expect we'll end up with a few competing Skynets in the next couple of decades, but the best we can hope for is that their overlords are reasonable people. Imho, trying to avoid this is a fool's errand; we're better off educating people and creating peripheral controls to help guide the megaliths into an agreeable position.
  - kaybe 14y ago
    As long as it's just companies that can be regulated by states and laws it's managable. The main task we have imho is to keep the governments out of the loop - we don't want the force monopoly combined with the data collection.
  - imd 14y ago
    Surely that's not the best we can hope for—or work for. It is not out of the realm of possibility that distributed social networks, like email or Diaspora, can gain popularity. But I don't know how to make that appealing to average people.
    - fryguy 14y ago
      If your concern is that a single entity is going to have your information, then Diaspora wouldn't help you anyways, as long as at least one of your friends is using a federated service that is a majority service (like blogger).
- qq66 14y ago
  It's effectively impossible to avoid being visible to Facebook, since hundreds of thousands of websites implement the Facebook "Like" button which makes huge amounts of your browsing activity visible to them (by IP address if you're not logged into Facebook).
  - groaner 14y ago
    Not if you invoke the nuclear option and put every facebook domain (including the fbcdn stuff) in your hosts file as 0.0.0.0
- daenz 14y ago
  > where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance. When you look at what has happened with mobile phone cameras and police brutality, it seems that this kind of tech does more active good than it does passive harm.
rjv 14y ago
I agree that all of the Google X projects of today will ultimately be what defines Google tomorrow. The fact that they have the guts to tackle projects that are incredibly risky for a business but meaningful for humanity is a major reason I'm happy to use their products. I love the geek factor.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  I'm not sure it's that risky for them. Google tends to try a bunch of different stuff, but doesn't seem too shy about cuttings its losses and failing reasonably fast when needed.
  - ocirion 14y ago
    What happens when they fail one too many times and the seemingly endless supply of R&D money runs out?
joelrunyon 14y ago
It seems that Google's products have future utility to them that seems to be lacking from FB. Facebook is focused on sharing. That can be an action, but until the action is focused, it doesn't seem to be useful (other than as a time-suck of course).
- taligent 14y ago
  I fail to see how photos which provide pleasure, foster relationships, enlighten and educate is not useful but a camera you wear on your head is.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - joelrunyon 14y ago
    The camera is a prototype for the direction they're headed. Driverless cars and glasses which provide information about objects you look certainly have more utility than a "camera you wear on your head."
mrkmcknz 14y ago
I agree. I made the argument only this weekend with a family member that technology companies come and go and tend to be cyclic. However, Google is here to stay. They might be search/advertising at the minute but those guys are really taking crazy problems head on and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Google had a breakthrough product in 5years with Cars. We can all criticize Google+, but Google is one of those companies that I look at and stand in awe of day after day.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > Google is here to stay. I agree. But then, I thought IBM was here to stay in PC manufacture. ("Nobody got fired for buying IBM"; and the thinkpads are god tier machines.) I guess people thought WANG were going to stay, 30,000 employees and approx $6billion (adjusted to today value) revenue.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
For anyone who didn't rtfa, here's a cool link of Sebastian Thrun demonstrating Project Glass on Charlie Rose: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321
- gcb 14y ago
  i did read the article, clicked to the interview link, saw only a picture and left. now i saw your comment, clicked the link and was about to dismiss the page a second time thinking all it had was a silly image when i finally decided to click it. so much for usability. how difficult it is to add a "play" triangle to video?
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Charlie Rose, despite his quality as an interviewer, is still part of "Old Media" and their crotchety inability to get "New Media". I don't mean Rose specifically, but the people he's paid by. Also, I sound completely stupid in that paragraph but I can't figure out how to say it better. :P
gouranga 14y ago
That google glass picture scares the fuck out of me. It instantly devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family. If this becomes the norm, I'm going all Luddite. I think it will also become: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8NbpCvSwo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8NbpCvSwo
- dfxm12 14y ago
  Can you elaborate how a picture taken with a camera you wear like glasses "devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family" compared to a picture taken with a more (I guess) traditional camera?
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Simply intent. The intent shipped with google glass is social by default. share. Identify. Record. There is no other reason to use it. The intent with a camera is to take a photo then decide the intent. The former is a dangerous paradigm shift.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      I didn't realize you had a Google Glass. How do you get one, and how can I get one?
      - gouranga 14y ago
        I don't and never will have. The marketing is pointing to deep integration like this.
        drivebyacct2 14y ago
        whoosh
        drivebyacct2 14y ago
gcb 14y ago
Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.
- antidaily 14y ago
  Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.
  - ImprovedSilence 14y ago
    As well as Reader.
  - toemetoch 14y ago
    Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.
    - jes5199 14y ago
      really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.
      - jrockway 14y ago
        The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
      - toemetoch 14y ago
        Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it. One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa. I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.
Codhisattva 14y ago
Google could have been the picture sharing site of choice with Picasa but for it's broken paradigm.
loganlinn 14y ago
As a moot sidenote, this story was submitted yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038962 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038962 (yes, coincidently by me)
- AsylumWarden 14y ago
  For me personally it was the title. For me, I am not as interested in "pictures and vision" as I am interested in the ongoing dominance struggle between Google and Facebook. Sensationalism, or at least a good teaser title, wins the day for me I'm afraid. It is a good find though. Good luck next time!
51Cards 14y ago
"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and it's valuable... but is it future proof? Are they thriving on momentum alone? Which wins the race? Dunno yet. Maybe it's just not the same race.
- falling 14y ago
  With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Making money from ads is just a business model. Don't confuse it for a one-hit product. Google could make a lot of different products and services that are based on ads. What you're saying is like saying 30 years ago that TV networks only survive on ads. I think in the next 5-10 years we'll also see a much more hardware-oriented Google, too. I think Google is serious about hardware (Glass,Motorola devices...maybe even a self-driving, self-sustaining electric car in the future? Who knows).
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    Google don't have to produce profit now. Remember that they didn't profit from search or ads for a long time. What they have to do is ensure no one else profits from some research, and to have a way of profiting in the long term. That is a lot easier to work out once something is successful, you know how people use it and it has become somewhat indispensable to users.
    - falling 14y ago
      Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? They are creating new cool tech, but they have to figure out how to make money from it, thus it’s not future proof. Android is successful, but apparently it’s not generating much profit for Google.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I don't think Google Glass is about taking photos (or videos) of your life. If anything, it makes the most sense to think of it as the next step to Google Goggles, and halfway to a Google Goggles HUD.
minalecs 14y ago
when he talks of sharing vision he nailed what google glasses is going to be. example: https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/CGR7sCzmDD7 https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/CGR7sCzm... Post of a video from a person jumping on a trampoline wearing the glasses.
excuse-me 14y ago
"Imagine actors and athletes doing what they do today on Twitter—sharing their adventures from a first-person POV—except doing it with Glass." Imagine having to click on a dozen copyright notices and pay for each image you see on Google/Facebook because the image they just took is owned by $ACTOR in europe, but $STUDIO in USA and $AGENCY in Japan but a blank page because Facebook doesn't have a right to use it in Canada.
- drostie 14y ago
  That's pretty much true, distribution for content will be a nightmare -- but that's due to the content-distributors being crazy and not so much due to the device being crazy. So, like, just to be totally clear, the business which doesn't have this problem with videos is porn. I don't know how interested they are in Project Glass in particular, but if Project Glass becomes a way to shoot amateur porn, you can bet that there will be web sites which cater to it. Distribution rights problems will not be a main concern because it's just not a general concern in that industry -- at least, it doesn't get in the way of the day-to-day transmission of the vast amounts of data.
- 27182818284 14y ago
  Why is this different than say Instagram by a celeb which happens all the time?
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    People don't "follow" images on Instagram by actors - the google glasses example is proposing a twitter-like system where users follow an actor's view live. Imagine a system where Napster had a musician bugged and could stream what they were playing in the studio - think there might be right's issues ?
JonnieCache 14y ago
Every day I become a little more scared I will live my adulthood in an episode of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWN9WEU2NP8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWN9WEU2NP8 EDIT: I see it has been mentioned downthread. Charlie Brooker is indeed a genius.
swayfm 14y ago
Show me google glass embedded in a pair of contact lenses, and then we'll talk.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
jianshen 14y ago
In short, the most important company in our lives will be the one that best looks after our memories.
chintan 14y ago
Old Google = GoogleX (try outrageous things, see what sticks) Current Google = Google+ (a beautiful bouquet of socially unified product experience) Future Google = ??
- duaneb 14y ago
  GoogleX is still there.
dkarl 14y ago
Facebook as a photo sharing app is a fascinating example of the service being generic and the context for the service being the main focus of competition. A bar sells drinks, but providing a competitive lineup of drinks is much easier than providing a competitive context in which to consume them. Coffee shops sell coffee and wifi, but they compete against each other as contexts within which to consume coffee and wifi. As a photo sharing app, what distinguishes Facebook from its competitors is the context it provides. The context is nothing by itself, of course, and this is what is rarely mentioned about social networking. A bar without drinks would be dry and boring: a Boys and Girls Club for adults. Similarly, the essential, defining factor of social networking -- the network, the web of connections between people -- is lame and reductive by itself. But it's the perfect context in which to share photos. Social networking is also a good context for non one-on-one communication. (For one-on-one communication, it offers nothing except a convenient way to initiate a conversation with other Facebook users, a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting.) I suspect the growth of Facebook as measured by users and usage will depend on discovering other services for which social networking is the perfect context.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  >a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting Well, I'm a teenager, and sadly Facebook is far more universal as a means of contact than texting or e-mail, personally. I don't have the email addresses or phone numbers of most of the people I know (often because I don't know them well enough), but I do have them friended on Facebook.
  - jes5199 14y ago
    Yeah, that's true for a lot of people who don't realize it. It's much easier to Friend somebody you met at a party than it is to exchange email addresses - and then you never have to ask "is this address still good after all this time?" I have over 400 facebook friends. I only have 200 contacts in my email address book, and most of those are probably stale.
  - dkarl 14y ago
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Two things: Both facebook and google are playing catchup on social. Facebook with monetization, google with popularity. This leaves them wide open to disruption from companies that nail the fundamentals from the get go and bring significant value-add to the table. Second, both companies view users like cattle. Just headcount to convert to dollars. Overall my hunch is that there's a 50/50 chance that neither google nor faceebook will be king of social in 2020. There's a lot of potential for disruption right now and both of these companies are so focused on each other I doubt they'd even notice a successful upstart until it was too late. The real risk to both, I think, is small companies which don't have billion dollar obligations on their backs already.
- mangoman 14y ago
  While I agree that both Facebook and Google have those respective problems, I think social is an area where user base is not easily portable. It would be tough to convert all the moms and dads to switch from Facebook to another platform...It was difficult enough to get them on Facebook.
Steko 14y ago
Ultimately he's making a pretty big claim about Google's future here that isn't grounded in reality. This is the same sort of talk that crowned Microsoft the tablet king over a decade ago while reality waited for Apple to actually build a consumer viable version. Whether it's the usual suspects like Google, MS and Apple who we know are already spending R&D here or a new entrant like Instagram which came out of nowhere with a handful of user friendly features, or some China anointed alternative it should be obvious that it's way to early to start counting chickens.
- robinsloan 14y ago
  Author here: You're right that it's a big claim, and I think it requires a lot of imagination & even some suspension of disbelief. It's safer to be skeptical. But specifically re: competition of all shapes & sizes, I do think that two of Google's long-term investments give it a pretty strong position: 1. Google Maps & Street View, which together comprise an amazingly detailed model of the real world. There are alternatives like OpenStreetMap of course, but there's a lot more going on in those products than just navigation. 2. The technology embedded in the self-driving car. I mean, a system that can interpret a live feed of the chaotic world around it and make important decisions based on what it sees? It doesn't feel to me like you can Instagram your way into that capability. (But, I don't know: maybe it's more commodified than I realize.)
  - apu 14y ago
    To lend some credence to these claims: other than the well-known Sebastian Thrun, Google also has at least a dozen world-class computer vision researchers working on a variety of different products, from Maps to the self-driving car to Goggles and others. This is some serious fire power, and in so far as the technical problems are unsolved (which they mostly are right now), no other company can touch them in the near future. Of course, there is always the important step of making something that consumers will use, but that's only possible if the technical problems are solved first. And perhaps Google is learning how to make more consumer-friendly things...
    - 14y ago
dxbydt 14y ago
to gauge marginal positive externalities, invert the principal component & see what remains. as an example - suppose you wake up tomorrow and google search stops working. never mind why - some random bug impossible to figure out, so it just stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, gmail. youtube. android. gdrive. maps. picasa. blogger. reader. googledocs. googlecheckout. etc etc etc... and that's not counting a single api / framework / language( gwt, go , dart, chromium, etc etc...) now suppose you wake up tomorrow and facebok stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, ???
- confluence 14y ago
  Reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote: that to get closer to the right answer, scholars should "invert, always invert." You have a strong point there. Most top 100 websites I see are just frontends to databases. I kid you not. Their competitive advantage is proprietary data holding and network effects to get more data. Google - search + database frontend. Facebook - database frontend. YouTube - database frontend. Yahoo! - search + database frontend. Baidu.com - search + database frontend. Wikipedia - database frontend. live.com - database frontend. Twitter.com - database frontend. QQ.COM - database frontend. Amazon.com - database frontend. Most of the stuff is just a front end to a database. Their positive marginal benefit derives from holding that data, using it as leverage to get more data, and then serving it back to their users in a tight loop.
  - mkinsella 14y ago
    Interesting point. However, I'll disagree with Amazon.com. Purchasing real world products is much more than just a database frontend.
    - confluence 14y ago
      If you're talking about warehousing/logistics - that is true. However they only did it because they had to reduce costs and simplify processing. I'm pretty sure Amazon would be much happier to just dropship by making an API call to third party logistics - which is essentially an inventory database from Amazon's point of view - but they are just too big now. I think they still do that with long tail items (don't store, but use third party logistics with an API call).
nodawg 14y ago
Saw this on reddit yesterday. Hacker News is the new Digg.
jwallaceparker 14y ago
re: Google Glasses I can never wear a pair of glasses that has a 3G connection. For better or for worse, I experience heightened ElectroSensitivity to the point where a 3G device that's operating within a few feet of me gives me a headache. Most mobile carriers are already starting to deprecate their 2G networks. Wearable wireless devices like Google Glasses will be a hazard for me, and many others. Within the next few years, I won't even be able to use a cell phone.
- ori_b 14y ago
  I find that hard to believe. Have a friend put a box beside you. Ask him to flip a coin every day for a week. If it comes up heads, he will put a 3g phone in that box. Otherwise, it should be empty. I will bet you that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
  - jwallaceparker 14y ago
    And why would make that up? I've done experiments like that plenty of times to prove it to people. I can tell whether my iPhone is in 2G or 3G mode with my eyes closed. It's well-documented. Search for "ElectroSensitivity." Phones with a high SAR value cause headaches for a subset of the population - I'm one of them.
guelo 14y ago
I'm not sure I understand this article. What is it that he imagines actors and athletes doing that they don't do with Twitter now? People hold up their phones pretty close to their face when capturing photos and videos so it is already the first person POV. And it is pretty easy to do, I'm sure it will be harder taking pics with Glass than a phone, it is more flexible taking pictures with your hands than your face. The only successful consumer head-mounted cameras that I know of are the Go Pros which are used mainly for niche action shots. If the main advantage of Glass is just that you can take pictures in situations where both your hands are busy that does not seem like the huge use-case that is going to take down Facebook.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  He imagines that the feed from, oh, say, a baseball player? (football is too violent) will, someday, be wearing one of these, and then you'll get to see the game from their perspective while they're doing other things, and it'll be awesome. ... I'll believe it's awesome, with copious amounts of editing. If you're just watching it raw, it'll be disorienting and shaky and distracting. :P I'm also dubious exactly what baseball team would bother to wear these things in the general case. Presumably they would just be a distraction to the players. Maybe someone like, oh, downhill skiiers would have a better time of things?
  - czr80 14y ago
    Serious question - how is that different from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Go to youtube right now and watch any number of first person downhill skiing videos. What does Glass add to that?
    - ori_b 14y ago
      Convenience
brudgers 14y ago
Here's the thing I see, Google has no meaningful history of monetizing things like self driving cars or video glasses or anything else except for via advertising. Yeah, they sell some web services, but that's a lot different from going head to head with companies that know about manufacturing like Toyota and BMW or those that know about consumer electronics like Samsung and Sony. I guess they could create an advertising sponsored self driving car or vision glasses that pop up ads (ala Walter Williams recent novel "The Fourth Wall" ISBN-13: 978-0316133395). But how is either going to be more profitable than their current model given the fundamental retooling of their business which would be required and the radically different cost structures associated with making real stuff? That's not to say Facebook is destined for significant innovation. As an advertising platform, they may be Yahoo 2.0 over the long term - too profitable from advertising to pivot and not growing fast enough to get love from analysts.
- hk_kh 14y ago
  Why stick to ads if you can sell / license software for cars? It could both work from a manufacturer or a personal POV. Buy my car, it comes with Google.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Hopefully they'll be smart enough to actually license the software. I half-suspect they'd do something stupid, like open-source it on the assumption that it would increase the demand for web advertising (since you could just use a tablet or laptop during your commute instead of driving).
  - brudgers 14y ago
    Can you think of an example of Google successfully licensing technology to manufacturers on a scale sufficient to noticeably change their bottom line?
albertzeyer 14y ago
Google needs to have some sort of brain interface to project glass. I.e. control it via your mind. The speaking out loud is distracting. It wont work. It's too complicated. And nobody wants to talk with his glasses (like noone wants to talk to Siri in public). People will not use it.
- saraid216 14y ago
  None of the demos I've seen have involved any speaking. They've involved tapping something and what might be eye tracking or head movements, but all the speaking was pretty obviously superfluous.
femto 14y ago
I view Google as a simulation company. The end game will be a real time whole earth simulation, with predictive power, and the associated opportunity for massive profits in any field where being ahead of the competition is an advantage.
shpoonj 14y ago
Naive question: The author says image views are a subset of page views. Is this accurate when the photos are shown in a light box capable of cycling through thousands of photos without leaving the initial page?
- r0s 14y ago
  Good question, I'd like to know the answer too. Javascript abstracts the whole theory of a "webpage" but I'm sure the image viewer reports back metrics and they have some system to track it all. In the end I'd guess it's probably treated similarly for marketing purposes.
trebuch3t 14y ago
Smart. Facebook nailed photos and now they need to nail mobile. No wonder they bought Instagram.
thescorer 14y ago
This guy is reaching with a few of his statements
tysont 14y ago
I still think that the future of Facebook is data (not specifically picture data, that's just one piece). Advances in hardware and cloud computing have kick started an era where data mining and machine learning are pervasive in every field from pharmaceutical research to banking to sports and everywhere in between. Facebook is the single authoritative source for a whole bunch of personal data. People have started thinking about the basic applications for that data when it comes to things like online shopping (you're a 31 year old white male with an 8 month old daughter who likes rock and roll, so you probably want to buy diapers, zinfandel, and a radiohead album), but I think that lots of new interesting applications will emerge over the next several years that don't violate user privacy and will monetize well.
h84ru3a 14y ago
Google is really good at seamlessly integrating the companies they acquire to give the appearance to users that Google develops much more than they actually do. The Google brand becomes synonymous with development that they actually did not themselves do.
systematical 14y ago
The only reason I don't delete my facebook is because of the pictures...and im not alone.
ocirion 14y ago
Google has a huge revenue generating machine in search, and adwords. This allows them the opportunity to spend massive amounts of money on a lot of projects that will mostly fail. They're hoping, at some point, one or more of these projects will turn profitable. But they're burning millions doing it. The problem with this approach is that they end up neglecting their core search product, which I don't think has evolved much in the past decade. If someone else comes along and disrupts search, its goodbye Google.
maked00 14y ago
Some trust fund kid spouting off, blah blah blah. Farcebook is of grannies and prole working moms. Most of farcebook's income is from games. The rest is just the internet with training wheels for morons, just like AOL was a few years ago, and we all know how well that worked out. The Google glasses thing is beyond stupid. Any fool can stream video from a strap on mini cam hat, have been able to for years. Ever wonder why that has not caught on? Nice try at topicality and posing as someone in the know.
maked00 14y ago
Some trust fund kid spouting off, blah blah blah. Farcebook is of grannies and prole working moms. Most of farcebook's income is from games. The rest is just the internet with training wheels for morons, just like AOL was a few years ago, and we all know how well that worked out. The Google glasses thing is beyond stupid. Any fool can stream video from a strap on mini cam hat, have been able to for years. Ever wonder why that has not caught on? Nice try at topicality and posing as someone in the know.
startupfounder 14y ago
What is interesting is that we think of Facebook as a social networking company, but they are mostly a hacker company whether it is hacking social networks, photos, servers, phone, etc. They have a similar culture to Google except coming at it from a DIY, teach yourself, pull it apart to put it back together again better angle and not a academic PhD research angle. Facebook is a global company and if they come out with a phone it is most likely not going to be pointed at the US market alone. They will be developing a phone aimed at the developing country markets where they have much of their traction. My guess is that the phone will have a low price point so that it is affordable to anyone in the world who wants it who currently doesn't have a smartphone. This included with mobile payments is what Facebook is after, they want to own the global mobile market.
zerop 14y ago
Despite of all innovation Google does, still past several years nearly 90% of their profit comes from online ads.

474 points by nextstep 14y ago

It is unfortunate they are both scary companies. They both know too much about their users, and their users connections. Even if you don't have a Facebook account, there is probably still some evidence of you in their system. Unlike Facebook, it would be pretty hard to not use Google at all, but it's at least possible to use their services and remain unidentified. Photos are over-rated, but tell that to the ~500 million people stalking each other on Facebook. Glass is an incredible vision into the future of computing, or a chilling vision of the future where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance.

eitally 14y ago
The fact of the matter is that most people are less concerned about personal privacy and data security than they are maintaining social relationships, so while I don't disagree with your premise I would argue that your point is fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I fully expect we'll end up with a few competing Skynets in the next couple of decades, but the best we can hope for is that their overlords are reasonable people. Imho, trying to avoid this is a fool's errand; we're better off educating people and creating peripheral controls to help guide the megaliths into an agreeable position.
- kaybe 14y ago
  As long as it's just companies that can be regulated by states and laws it's managable. The main task we have imho is to keep the governments out of the loop - we don't want the force monopoly combined with the data collection.
- imd 14y ago
  Surely that's not the best we can hope for—or work for. It is not out of the realm of possibility that distributed social networks, like email or Diaspora, can gain popularity. But I don't know how to make that appealing to average people.
  - fryguy 14y ago
    If your concern is that a single entity is going to have your information, then Diaspora wouldn't help you anyways, as long as at least one of your friends is using a federated service that is a majority service (like blogger).
qq66 14y ago
It's effectively impossible to avoid being visible to Facebook, since hundreds of thousands of websites implement the Facebook "Like" button which makes huge amounts of your browsing activity visible to them (by IP address if you're not logged into Facebook).
- groaner 14y ago
  Not if you invoke the nuclear option and put every facebook domain (including the fbcdn stuff) in your hosts file as 0.0.0.0
daenz 14y ago
> where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance. When you look at what has happened with mobile phone cameras and police brutality, it seems that this kind of tech does more active good than it does passive harm.

rjv 14y ago

I agree that all of the Google X projects of today will ultimately be what defines Google tomorrow. The fact that they have the guts to tackle projects that are incredibly risky for a business but meaningful for humanity is a major reason I'm happy to use their products. I love the geek factor.

Symmetry 14y ago
I'm not sure it's that risky for them. Google tends to try a bunch of different stuff, but doesn't seem too shy about cuttings its losses and failing reasonably fast when needed.
- ocirion 14y ago
  What happens when they fail one too many times and the seemingly endless supply of R&D money runs out?

joelrunyon 14y ago

It seems that Google's products have future utility to them that seems to be lacking from FB. Facebook is focused on sharing. That can be an action, but until the action is focused, it doesn't seem to be useful (other than as a time-suck of course).

taligent 14y ago
I fail to see how photos which provide pleasure, foster relationships, enlighten and educate is not useful but a camera you wear on your head is.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- joelrunyon 14y ago
  The camera is a prototype for the direction they're headed. Driverless cars and glasses which provide information about objects you look certainly have more utility than a "camera you wear on your head."

mrkmcknz 14y ago

I agree. I made the argument only this weekend with a family member that technology companies come and go and tend to be cyclic. However, Google is here to stay. They might be search/advertising at the minute but those guys are really taking crazy problems head on and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Google had a breakthrough product in 5years with Cars. We can all criticize Google+, but Google is one of those companies that I look at and stand in awe of day after day.

DanBC 14y ago
> Google is here to stay. I agree. But then, I thought IBM was here to stay in PC manufacture. ("Nobody got fired for buying IBM"; and the thinkpads are god tier machines.) I guess people thought WANG were going to stay, 30,000 employees and approx $6billion (adjusted to today value) revenue.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

For anyone who didn't rtfa, here's a cool link of Sebastian Thrun demonstrating Project Glass on Charlie Rose: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321

gcb 14y ago
i did read the article, clicked to the interview link, saw only a picture and left. now i saw your comment, clicked the link and was about to dismiss the page a second time thinking all it had was a silly image when i finally decided to click it. so much for usability. how difficult it is to add a "play" triangle to video?
- saraid216 14y ago
  Charlie Rose, despite his quality as an interviewer, is still part of "Old Media" and their crotchety inability to get "New Media". I don't mean Rose specifically, but the people he's paid by. Also, I sound completely stupid in that paragraph but I can't figure out how to say it better. :P

gouranga 14y ago

That google glass picture scares the fuck out of me. It instantly devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family. If this becomes the norm, I'm going all Luddite. I think it will also become: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8NbpCvSwo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8NbpCvSwo

dfxm12 14y ago
Can you elaborate how a picture taken with a camera you wear like glasses "devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family" compared to a picture taken with a more (I guess) traditional camera?
- gouranga 14y ago
  Simply intent. The intent shipped with google glass is social by default. share. Identify. Record. There is no other reason to use it. The intent with a camera is to take a photo then decide the intent. The former is a dangerous paradigm shift.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    I didn't realize you had a Google Glass. How do you get one, and how can I get one?
    - gouranga 14y ago
      I don't and never will have. The marketing is pointing to deep integration like this.
      - drivebyacct2 14y ago
        whoosh
        drivebyacct2 14y ago

gcb 14y ago

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

antidaily 14y ago
Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  As well as Reader.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.
  - jes5199 14y ago
    really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
    - toemetoch 14y ago
      Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it. One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa. I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.

Codhisattva 14y ago

Google could have been the picture sharing site of choice with Picasa but for it's broken paradigm.

loganlinn 14y ago

As a moot sidenote, this story was submitted yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038962 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038962 (yes, coincidently by me)

AsylumWarden 14y ago
For me personally it was the title. For me, I am not as interested in "pictures and vision" as I am interested in the ongoing dominance struggle between Google and Facebook. Sensationalism, or at least a good teaser title, wins the day for me I'm afraid. It is a good find though. Good luck next time!

51Cards 14y ago

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and it's valuable... but is it future proof? Are they thriving on momentum alone? Which wins the race? Dunno yet. Maybe it's just not the same race.

falling 14y ago
With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Making money from ads is just a business model. Don't confuse it for a one-hit product. Google could make a lot of different products and services that are based on ads. What you're saying is like saying 30 years ago that TV networks only survive on ads. I think in the next 5-10 years we'll also see a much more hardware-oriented Google, too. I think Google is serious about hardware (Glass,Motorola devices...maybe even a self-driving, self-sustaining electric car in the future? Who knows).
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  Google don't have to produce profit now. Remember that they didn't profit from search or ads for a long time. What they have to do is ensure no one else profits from some research, and to have a way of profiting in the long term. That is a lot easier to work out once something is successful, you know how people use it and it has become somewhat indispensable to users.
  - falling 14y ago
    Isn’t that repeating the same thing I said? They are creating new cool tech, but they have to figure out how to make money from it, thus it’s not future proof. Android is successful, but apparently it’s not generating much profit for Google.

sliverstorm 14y ago

I don't think Google Glass is about taking photos (or videos) of your life. If anything, it makes the most sense to think of it as the next step to Google Goggles, and halfway to a Google Goggles HUD.

minalecs 14y ago

when he talks of sharing vision he nailed what google glasses is going to be. example: https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/CGR7sCzmDD7 https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/CGR7sCzm... Post of a video from a person jumping on a trampoline wearing the glasses.

excuse-me 14y ago

"Imagine actors and athletes doing what they do today on Twitter—sharing their adventures from a first-person POV—except doing it with Glass." Imagine having to click on a dozen copyright notices and pay for each image you see on Google/Facebook because the image they just took is owned by $ACTOR in europe, but $STUDIO in USA and $AGENCY in Japan but a blank page because Facebook doesn't have a right to use it in Canada.

drostie 14y ago
That's pretty much true, distribution for content will be a nightmare -- but that's due to the content-distributors being crazy and not so much due to the device being crazy. So, like, just to be totally clear, the business which doesn't have this problem with videos is porn. I don't know how interested they are in Project Glass in particular, but if Project Glass becomes a way to shoot amateur porn, you can bet that there will be web sites which cater to it. Distribution rights problems will not be a main concern because it's just not a general concern in that industry -- at least, it doesn't get in the way of the day-to-day transmission of the vast amounts of data.
27182818284 14y ago
Why is this different than say Instagram by a celeb which happens all the time?
- excuse-me 14y ago
  People don't "follow" images on Instagram by actors - the google glasses example is proposing a twitter-like system where users follow an actor's view live. Imagine a system where Napster had a musician bugged and could stream what they were playing in the studio - think there might be right's issues ?

JonnieCache 14y ago

Every day I become a little more scared I will live my adulthood in an episode of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWN9WEU2NP8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWN9WEU2NP8 EDIT: I see it has been mentioned downthread. Charlie Brooker is indeed a genius.

swayfm 14y ago

Show me google glass embedded in a pair of contact lenses, and then we'll talk.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

jianshen 14y ago

In short, the most important company in our lives will be the one that best looks after our memories.

chintan 14y ago

Old Google = GoogleX (try outrageous things, see what sticks) Current Google = Google+ (a beautiful bouquet of socially unified product experience) Future Google = ??

duaneb 14y ago
GoogleX is still there.

dkarl 14y ago

Facebook as a photo sharing app is a fascinating example of the service being generic and the context for the service being the main focus of competition. A bar sells drinks, but providing a competitive lineup of drinks is much easier than providing a competitive context in which to consume them. Coffee shops sell coffee and wifi, but they compete against each other as contexts within which to consume coffee and wifi. As a photo sharing app, what distinguishes Facebook from its competitors is the context it provides. The context is nothing by itself, of course, and this is what is rarely mentioned about social networking. A bar without drinks would be dry and boring: a Boys and Girls Club for adults. Similarly, the essential, defining factor of social networking -- the network, the web of connections between people -- is lame and reductive by itself. But it's the perfect context in which to share photos. Social networking is also a good context for non one-on-one communication. (For one-on-one communication, it offers nothing except a convenient way to initiate a conversation with other Facebook users, a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting.) I suspect the growth of Facebook as measured by users and usage will depend on discovering other services for which social networking is the perfect context.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
>a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting Well, I'm a teenager, and sadly Facebook is far more universal as a means of contact than texting or e-mail, personally. I don't have the email addresses or phone numbers of most of the people I know (often because I don't know them well enough), but I do have them friended on Facebook.
- jes5199 14y ago
  Yeah, that's true for a lot of people who don't realize it. It's much easier to Friend somebody you met at a party than it is to exchange email addresses - and then you never have to ask "is this address still good after all this time?" I have over 400 facebook friends. I only have 200 contacts in my email address book, and most of those are probably stale.
- dkarl 14y ago

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Two things: Both facebook and google are playing catchup on social. Facebook with monetization, google with popularity. This leaves them wide open to disruption from companies that nail the fundamentals from the get go and bring significant value-add to the table. Second, both companies view users like cattle. Just headcount to convert to dollars. Overall my hunch is that there's a 50/50 chance that neither google nor faceebook will be king of social in 2020. There's a lot of potential for disruption right now and both of these companies are so focused on each other I doubt they'd even notice a successful upstart until it was too late. The real risk to both, I think, is small companies which don't have billion dollar obligations on their backs already.

mangoman 14y ago
While I agree that both Facebook and Google have those respective problems, I think social is an area where user base is not easily portable. It would be tough to convert all the moms and dads to switch from Facebook to another platform...It was difficult enough to get them on Facebook.

Steko 14y ago

Ultimately he's making a pretty big claim about Google's future here that isn't grounded in reality. This is the same sort of talk that crowned Microsoft the tablet king over a decade ago while reality waited for Apple to actually build a consumer viable version. Whether it's the usual suspects like Google, MS and Apple who we know are already spending R&D here or a new entrant like Instagram which came out of nowhere with a handful of user friendly features, or some China anointed alternative it should be obvious that it's way to early to start counting chickens.

robinsloan 14y ago
Author here: You're right that it's a big claim, and I think it requires a lot of imagination & even some suspension of disbelief. It's safer to be skeptical. But specifically re: competition of all shapes & sizes, I do think that two of Google's long-term investments give it a pretty strong position: 1. Google Maps & Street View, which together comprise an amazingly detailed model of the real world. There are alternatives like OpenStreetMap of course, but there's a lot more going on in those products than just navigation. 2. The technology embedded in the self-driving car. I mean, a system that can interpret a live feed of the chaotic world around it and make important decisions based on what it sees? It doesn't feel to me like you can Instagram your way into that capability. (But, I don't know: maybe it's more commodified than I realize.)
- apu 14y ago
  To lend some credence to these claims: other than the well-known Sebastian Thrun, Google also has at least a dozen world-class computer vision researchers working on a variety of different products, from Maps to the self-driving car to Goggles and others. This is some serious fire power, and in so far as the technical problems are unsolved (which they mostly are right now), no other company can touch them in the near future. Of course, there is always the important step of making something that consumers will use, but that's only possible if the technical problems are solved first. And perhaps Google is learning how to make more consumer-friendly things...
  - 14y ago

dxbydt 14y ago

to gauge marginal positive externalities, invert the principal component & see what remains. as an example - suppose you wake up tomorrow and google search stops working. never mind why - some random bug impossible to figure out, so it just stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, gmail. youtube. android. gdrive. maps. picasa. blogger. reader. googledocs. googlecheckout. etc etc etc... and that's not counting a single api / framework / language( gwt, go , dart, chromium, etc etc...) now suppose you wake up tomorrow and facebok stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, ???

confluence 14y ago
Reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote: that to get closer to the right answer, scholars should "invert, always invert." You have a strong point there. Most top 100 websites I see are just frontends to databases. I kid you not. Their competitive advantage is proprietary data holding and network effects to get more data. Google - search + database frontend. Facebook - database frontend. YouTube - database frontend. Yahoo! - search + database frontend. Baidu.com - search + database frontend. Wikipedia - database frontend. live.com - database frontend. Twitter.com - database frontend. QQ.COM - database frontend. Amazon.com - database frontend. Most of the stuff is just a front end to a database. Their positive marginal benefit derives from holding that data, using it as leverage to get more data, and then serving it back to their users in a tight loop.
- mkinsella 14y ago
  Interesting point. However, I'll disagree with Amazon.com. Purchasing real world products is much more than just a database frontend.
  - confluence 14y ago
    If you're talking about warehousing/logistics - that is true. However they only did it because they had to reduce costs and simplify processing. I'm pretty sure Amazon would be much happier to just dropship by making an API call to third party logistics - which is essentially an inventory database from Amazon's point of view - but they are just too big now. I think they still do that with long tail items (don't store, but use third party logistics with an API call).

nodawg 14y ago

Saw this on reddit yesterday. Hacker News is the new Digg.

jwallaceparker 14y ago

re: Google Glasses I can never wear a pair of glasses that has a 3G connection. For better or for worse, I experience heightened ElectroSensitivity to the point where a 3G device that's operating within a few feet of me gives me a headache. Most mobile carriers are already starting to deprecate their 2G networks. Wearable wireless devices like Google Glasses will be a hazard for me, and many others. Within the next few years, I won't even be able to use a cell phone.

ori_b 14y ago
I find that hard to believe. Have a friend put a box beside you. Ask him to flip a coin every day for a week. If it comes up heads, he will put a 3g phone in that box. Otherwise, it should be empty. I will bet you that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
- jwallaceparker 14y ago
  And why would make that up? I've done experiments like that plenty of times to prove it to people. I can tell whether my iPhone is in 2G or 3G mode with my eyes closed. It's well-documented. Search for "ElectroSensitivity." Phones with a high SAR value cause headaches for a subset of the population - I'm one of them.

guelo 14y ago

I'm not sure I understand this article. What is it that he imagines actors and athletes doing that they don't do with Twitter now? People hold up their phones pretty close to their face when capturing photos and videos so it is already the first person POV. And it is pretty easy to do, I'm sure it will be harder taking pics with Glass than a phone, it is more flexible taking pictures with your hands than your face. The only successful consumer head-mounted cameras that I know of are the Go Pros which are used mainly for niche action shots. If the main advantage of Glass is just that you can take pictures in situations where both your hands are busy that does not seem like the huge use-case that is going to take down Facebook.

fennecfoxen 14y ago
He imagines that the feed from, oh, say, a baseball player? (football is too violent) will, someday, be wearing one of these, and then you'll get to see the game from their perspective while they're doing other things, and it'll be awesome. ... I'll believe it's awesome, with copious amounts of editing. If you're just watching it raw, it'll be disorienting and shaky and distracting. :P I'm also dubious exactly what baseball team would bother to wear these things in the general case. Presumably they would just be a distraction to the players. Maybe someone like, oh, downhill skiiers would have a better time of things?
- czr80 14y ago
  Serious question - how is that different from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Go to youtube right now and watch any number of first person downhill skiing videos. What does Glass add to that?
  - ori_b 14y ago
    Convenience

brudgers 14y ago

Here's the thing I see, Google has no meaningful history of monetizing things like self driving cars or video glasses or anything else except for via advertising. Yeah, they sell some web services, but that's a lot different from going head to head with companies that know about manufacturing like Toyota and BMW or those that know about consumer electronics like Samsung and Sony. I guess they could create an advertising sponsored self driving car or vision glasses that pop up ads (ala Walter Williams recent novel "The Fourth Wall" ISBN-13: 978-0316133395). But how is either going to be more profitable than their current model given the fundamental retooling of their business which would be required and the radically different cost structures associated with making real stuff? That's not to say Facebook is destined for significant innovation. As an advertising platform, they may be Yahoo 2.0 over the long term - too profitable from advertising to pivot and not growing fast enough to get love from analysts.

hk_kh 14y ago
Why stick to ads if you can sell / license software for cars? It could both work from a manufacturer or a personal POV. Buy my car, it comes with Google.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Hopefully they'll be smart enough to actually license the software. I half-suspect they'd do something stupid, like open-source it on the assumption that it would increase the demand for web advertising (since you could just use a tablet or laptop during your commute instead of driving).
- brudgers 14y ago
  Can you think of an example of Google successfully licensing technology to manufacturers on a scale sufficient to noticeably change their bottom line?

albertzeyer 14y ago

Google needs to have some sort of brain interface to project glass. I.e. control it via your mind. The speaking out loud is distracting. It wont work. It's too complicated. And nobody wants to talk with his glasses (like noone wants to talk to Siri in public). People will not use it.

saraid216 14y ago
None of the demos I've seen have involved any speaking. They've involved tapping something and what might be eye tracking or head movements, but all the speaking was pretty obviously superfluous.

femto 14y ago

I view Google as a simulation company. The end game will be a real time whole earth simulation, with predictive power, and the associated opportunity for massive profits in any field where being ahead of the competition is an advantage.

shpoonj 14y ago

Naive question: The author says image views are a subset of page views. Is this accurate when the photos are shown in a light box capable of cycling through thousands of photos without leaving the initial page?

r0s 14y ago
Good question, I'd like to know the answer too. Javascript abstracts the whole theory of a "webpage" but I'm sure the image viewer reports back metrics and they have some system to track it all. In the end I'd guess it's probably treated similarly for marketing purposes.

trebuch3t 14y ago

Smart. Facebook nailed photos and now they need to nail mobile. No wonder they bought Instagram.

thescorer 14y ago

This guy is reaching with a few of his statements

tysont 14y ago

I still think that the future of Facebook is data (not specifically picture data, that's just one piece). Advances in hardware and cloud computing have kick started an era where data mining and machine learning are pervasive in every field from pharmaceutical research to banking to sports and everywhere in between. Facebook is the single authoritative source for a whole bunch of personal data. People have started thinking about the basic applications for that data when it comes to things like online shopping (you're a 31 year old white male with an 8 month old daughter who likes rock and roll, so you probably want to buy diapers, zinfandel, and a radiohead album), but I think that lots of new interesting applications will emerge over the next several years that don't violate user privacy and will monetize well.

h84ru3a 14y ago

Google is really good at seamlessly integrating the companies they acquire to give the appearance to users that Google develops much more than they actually do. The Google brand becomes synonymous with development that they actually did not themselves do.

systematical 14y ago

The only reason I don't delete my facebook is because of the pictures...and im not alone.

ocirion 14y ago

Google has a huge revenue generating machine in search, and adwords. This allows them the opportunity to spend massive amounts of money on a lot of projects that will mostly fail. They're hoping, at some point, one or more of these projects will turn profitable. But they're burning millions doing it. The problem with this approach is that they end up neglecting their core search product, which I don't think has evolved much in the past decade. If someone else comes along and disrupts search, its goodbye Google.

maked00 14y ago

Some trust fund kid spouting off, blah blah blah. Farcebook is of grannies and prole working moms. Most of farcebook's income is from games. The rest is just the internet with training wheels for morons, just like AOL was a few years ago, and we all know how well that worked out. The Google glasses thing is beyond stupid. Any fool can stream video from a strap on mini cam hat, have been able to for years. Ever wonder why that has not caught on? Nice try at topicality and posing as someone in the know.

maked00 14y ago

startupfounder 14y ago

What is interesting is that we think of Facebook as a social networking company, but they are mostly a hacker company whether it is hacking social networks, photos, servers, phone, etc. They have a similar culture to Google except coming at it from a DIY, teach yourself, pull it apart to put it back together again better angle and not a academic PhD research angle. Facebook is a global company and if they come out with a phone it is most likely not going to be pointed at the US market alone. They will be developing a phone aimed at the developing country markets where they have much of their traction. My guess is that the phone will have a low price point so that it is affordable to anyone in the world who wants it who currently doesn't have a smartphone. This included with mobile payments is what Facebook is after, they want to own the global mobile market.

zerop 14y ago

Despite of all innovation Google does, still past several years nearly 90% of their profit comes from online ads.