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This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm]. As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet
by cletus 14y ago
This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm].
As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet (in the AOL sense), Facebook is actually really late to this party.
Apple has a mobile OS, a content and payments ecosystem and a deeply integrated set of products.
Google has a mobile OS, GMail, a search engine, a burgeoning content ecosystem and its Maps/local properties.
Amazon has a content and payments ecosystem, a limited mobile presence (Kindle Fires basically, which are of course tablets not phones) and cloud infrastructure.
All of these things are (IMHO) pieces in technology's future. Facebook really is a one trick pony (although an 8000 pound pony if you want to stretch the metaphor).
It's why you saw them panic about Instagram (if a ~2 year old company with 13 employees is an existential threat then your position is, by definition, precarious).
It's why rumours of a Facebook Phone have circulated for a year or two (eg Project Spartan) and why Facebook launched Facebook Home. It's trying to get the benefits of having a mobile OS without actually developing one and building market share (ask Microsoft how hard that is).
Facebook's strength really is being a closed silo/platform for The Internet (or a version of it at least). So buying Parse makes perfect sense as they want to extend the reach and power of the Facebook platform.
Congrats to the Parse guys.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer for Google.
- jjuliano 14y agoGiven the very lucrative and competitive mobile market space, we will likely to see tremendous updates in the Android platform if Google have acquired it. At least Facebook won't be biased about what mobile platform to support, it can support all other platforms without focusing on specific Android. I use Parse as my backend for my iOS apps and it is absolutely useful. They provided a great service and the mPaAS approach to developing and managing mobile apps data and services is revolutionary.
- mcintyre1994 14y agoThat's not really fair. Google seem to work very hard to provide a first class iOS experience on their own services. No reason to assume they'd shut that down on something they acquired.
- jjuliano 14y agoWell, 1. They shut down their acquired companies and their products on many occasions that many people are dependent upon 2. They shut down a handful of Google tools many people are dependent upon 3. They even close people's Google accounts. Use their service, yes, but trust them after all of this dents they made? maybe. The weight of their actions is so great, I can't even begin to talk about matters in relation to trust on their side. It's just _hard_. I'm glad Facebook acquired Parse.
- mcintyre1994 14y agoOh, this. Shutting down services is different to restricting services to your own platform. Perhaps you have a point, perhaps Google would hypothetically have decided to shut down Parse had they acquired it, but it's not fair to suggest they'd have limited it to Android.
- anoncow 14y agoDoesn't make business sense to ignore the scores using iOS.
- lmm 14y agoIf it drives users away from iOS then it does. Apple is the biggest threat to google.
- mcintyre1994 14y agoI disagree. Google is probably the biggest threat to Apple, and Apple is probably the biggest threat to Android, but not to Google. Apple has essentially no web presence, companies that do are a much bigger existential threat to Google.
- Apocryphon 14y agoIronic that Google seems to have a social networking problem, while Facebook has a mobile problem.
- w1ntermute 14y agoGoogle should've bought Facebook years ago, when it was still small.
- avolcano 14y agoWell, there's no guarantee that Google would have known what to do with it if they had ;)
- dsfasfasf 14y agoAt worst they could have killed it instead of having to fight it. At best, it could have become what it is today or at least something similar.
- aashaykumar92 14y agoDo you really think Zuckerberg would have agreed to that? I doubt it. Facebook was still relatively small when Yahoo offered to buy them for $1 billion but Zuckerberg didn't give it much thought at all.
- chubot 14y ago
- gcb0 14y agoyou laid down an excellent foundation and then just dismissed it on the conclusion. why does buying parse makes perfect sense for facebook? you already mentioned they are doing fine there, with their little piece of the internet in their app. why would they want to support 60,000 apps that does other things out of their little corner? ....oh, will they bait and switch them? all 60,000 apps forced to login via facebook only next month?
- jtdaugh 14y agostraight off the parse blog: > Q: Will Parse apps have to use Facebook functionality? No.
- hkmurakami 14y agoUnfortunately that could change in a moment's notice in the future :(
- jacquesm 14y agoPromises made just post acquisition have historically had a low correlation with future events.
- jcampbell1 14y agoI think Facebook is making a play to take over Android. Buying parse gives them an app platform and something like iCloud but it works.
- iambpentameter 14y agoFacebook bought strobe in 2011 which was also an "app delivery network" and did nothing with it. Why pick up another one?
- julianpye 14y agoI always thought that Parse would be an excellent acquisition target for Azure, since the cross-platform support of Azure for mobile platforms is done so clumsily.
- buzzrecords 14y agoBuddy would be a better acquisition target for Azure - their BaaS platform is more aligned with Azure's tech and Microsoft is an investor in Buddy (although, Google was an investor in Parse).
- sidcool 14y agoA very good piece of discourse. I wish HN had more of such contributors.
- livestyle 14y agoOdd that all the relevant backlash comments are pushed to the bottom.
- freshfunk 14y agoFacebook is a one trick pony as much as Google is a one trick pony (search).