Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android(techcrunch.com)

62 points by RmDen 6 years ago | 21 comments

protomyth 6 years ago |

By moving to its own OS, Facebook could have more freedom to bake social interaction — and hopefully privacy — deeper into its devices.

Privacy? I expect some amazing detailed & intrusive data gathering.

twiceaday 6 years ago | |

By 'Privacy' they mean they will be the only ones with access to your data.

hurricanetc 6 years ago | | |

Except for all the companies that accidentally leak it to, all the companies that grab it in breaches, all the companies that find it sitting in S3, all the companies they sell it to, etc.

But otherwise yes only Facebook will have it.

MobileVet 6 years ago | |

Seriously, what a ridiculous comment by TechCrunch. Facebook is openly hostile to your privacy, don’t give them an inch.

It would be great if journalists stopped sharing the PR snippets from companies and focused on what they actually do.

Actions should always speak louder than words

mattynice 6 years ago |

All the more reason to consider the HTC Vive or Steam Index if interested in being an early adapter of VR where their achievements can be more collaborative.

Side note regarding Portal and other "social hardware", I can't imagine there being user-friendly privacy toggles when facebook owns the complete stack..

baroffoos 6 years ago | |

Valve has done a pretty good job at standardizing VR tech with OpenVR/SteamVR. All of the headsets except the oculus seem to have really good hardware compatibility. The vive controllers can be used with the pimax hmd, etc.

Facebook seems to be trying really hard to create a lockin with the oculus, if you buy games on the oculus store, you are now forever locked in to only buying oculus hardware from now on.

collias 6 years ago | | |

Thankfully you can use Oculus devices (or at least, the Quest) with the new Link feature to turn the headset into a sort of external display, which is then compatible with SteamVR.

Honestly it's the biggest selling point of the Quest for me, in addition to being able to hack around on it through an adb shell.

Slippery_John 6 years ago |

I doubt this will get much in the way of mainstream penetration. You're never going to see any competitive phone installations of this. It'll probably mostly be for things like portal. I doubt they'd be successful in doing a chromebook competitor either given how horribly tarnished their name is, but it does at least seem more realistic than a phone.

behringer 6 years ago | |

You kidding? Free phones with Facebook OS built in all funded by selling every scrap of your data? Third world countries are gonna eat that up to begin with, and then it'll spread all over.

WatchDog 6 years ago |

Android privacy is bad enough as it is, I can't imagine how horrible a facebook operating system would be.

rb808 6 years ago |

Wasn't there one like this already (though used android) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First

npo9 6 years ago |

It’s an obvious vertical integration play to make an operating system for the hardware you manufacturer.

I’d like to see an AR/VR first OS/UI.

Apocryphon 6 years ago |

Finally, a rival for Fuchsia.

r00fus 6 years ago |

Good luck with that, Mark.

whoisjuan 6 years ago |

For a company of the size of FB and its ambitions, this seems kind of late. I would have thought they already had something like this.

kerng 6 years ago |

Mark Lucovsky is pretty legendary! Every Windows exe starts with the two bytes ML!

EDIT: As others pointed out its actually another Mark, MZ. Lucovsky was the Mark, who Steve Ballmer was throwing chairs around when he said to leave for Google. Still legendary. :)

umeshunni 6 years ago | |

That's MZ for Mark Zbikowski - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zbikowski

justinsaccount 6 years ago | |

Every windows exe starts with the two bytes MZ

kerng 6 years ago | |

Ah, thanks for correcting. Microsoft always had too many Marks, Russinovich is another famous one.

sjg007 6 years ago |

Makes sense. It'll be a *nix variant probably.. we might get a nice new UI layer out of it.

tommyengstrom 6 years ago |

Eye OS, because they will always be watching you?