The second-to-last paragraph in this article reads like it came straight out of a Facebook press release:
Put these two new people together with Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, brought to Facebook almost three years ago and Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, the creators of Gmail, Adsense and Friendfeed, acquired just under one year ago, and what do you get? A monster team with the experience to create a compelling, fully wrap-around internet experience for hundreds of millions of users.
Also am I the only one who finds it a little odd that Facebook sends out press alerts about which engineers it snagged from which companies? I understand why some people - or at least, some websites - would care, it just all sounds so silly in the end.
I think this is mostly free publicity to acquire other talent. Engineers like to work with other good engineers. For instance, I'd love to work with Joe Hewitt and Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. Firebug, gmail and tornado.py (respectively) are great pieces of software produced by very talented engineers.
Honestly Google's bifurcation in supporting both Chrome OS and Android was, at least to me, a perplexing decision, as they seem fundamentally (competing UI's, similar market) to be incompatible roadmaps.
If touch tablets ends up upending the netbook category, then Chrome OS won't really have a home. It doesn't have the capability of taking advantage of advanced hardware, and netbook functionality might be fully accounted for by Android tablets. Chrome OS was an interesting bet in the direction of computing (smaller, inexpensive notebooks as the norm for Internet consumption and light office work), but things might not pan out the way Chrome's founders had thought.
Steve Ballmer said it quite right: Android was a bet on the technology of the past (OS, installable apps, etc), and Chrome OS is a bet on the future (webapps, light clients, etc.)
technology of the past (OS, installable apps, etc)
Except it turns out that obsolete stuff like local storage and direct hardware access and being able to run offline is actually sort of useful, which is why everybody is falling over themselves trying to jam all of it into HTML5.
Chrome OS is completely browser-centric & cloud-centric. While Android is a small device OS oriented to phones. Android also supports installing 3rd party applications, which my guess is Chrome doesn't.
I assume that Chrome OS will completely sync with Chrome on the desktop. This means that if you're working on your web-based apps on your computer, you'll be able to pick up your Chrome tablet and seamlessly continue the work and then switch back again.
Why couldn't that be done approximately as well on, say, Android, though? I don't see any particular reason why I'd pick a device based around Chrome OS when that device could run Android instead which seems able to do everything that Chrome OS can do and more.
In other words: what do Chrome OS's limitations add to the experience? It's interesting from a technical standpoint to build a fully-functioning system with Chrome OS's limitations, but how does it make a better product?
Android also supports installing 3rd party applications, which my guess is Chrome doesn't.
If that is true, then Chrome will certainly be violating the spirit if not the letter of software - "free software" that only allows you to do things on server controlled by someone else...
It's not so much that it solves a problem as much as that it presents an experience that some people want.
It is _exactly_ what I've wanted since netbooks came into existence, and I've put a lot of hours into setting up stripper Arch setups that do this.
Is it better than anything else on paper? No, but on paper isn't the only way to measure things (to the chagrin of us engineers). Sometimes less is more.
Naming both their browser and their OS distro Chrome was a perplexing decision for me. Would not have killed them to have 2 distinct names. Less confusion.
Reminds me of Google 5 years ago. There's a point in a companies life when they're hot and smart people are easily lured in by promises of world-changing work and working with other really smart people. What happens though is they eventually realize that it's just another job and a room full of really smart people isn't always the best recipe to create something that changes the world (and your bank account). Sometimes you need a few great leaders and a team of dedicated "team players" to really pull off something cool.
I believe Facebook is entering that phase now where they'll have tons of money to throw at these guys with promises of working on "the next big thing". Expect these guys to leave after 3-4 years for smaller more progressive ventures.
Picking up some pre-IPO options in a Facebook would also be a nice reason to become a Facebooker.
Google had 2,668 employees in September 2004, just after it IPO'd, and at the beginning of 2010 it had about 20,000.
eBay IPO'd in September 1998 with only about 30 employees and revenues of $4.7 million. In 2008 it had about 16,000.
Facebook will definitely IPO at some point, its VCs will demand it, and this recruit is perhaps more for IPO marketing than anything else. It now claims to have 1400+ staff.
I was thinking "browser" as well when I read this. But Facebook is a social networking company, and what is the greatest social network of them all? The phone network. So my hunch is that they are creating a mobile OS that closely interlinks their own social network and the phone network.
Now if it's ChromeOS fork, one would assume that Facebook wouldn't have absolute control, given that it would be "re-forkable". This might an issue given Facebook's "your data belong to us" attitude (if that's not the current TOS).
Perhaps they'll create a similar thing from scratch.
I'm really curious about the core motivations a devloper like Matt has for leaving a project like Chrome OS before it's seen through to completion.
To be as gifted as Matt appears to be, you have to have a deep love for what you do. And with that love, I would hope comes a sense of pride and ownership in your work. I just couldn't fathom walking away from something like Chrome OS to work at Facebook.
I imagine Facebook gave him one heck of an offer. But if there is anything I've learned in the short time I've been a devloper and the even shorter amount of time I've been reading HN, it's that people who truly love what they do in this industry don't always go for the gold. And even if he is dirven by financial gain, I can't imagine he was wanting for much of anything working at Google, so why the switch?
Would you rather work for Google post-IPO, where the stock is up and down every year, or would you rather work for Facebook pre-IPO and potentially make $millions?
I think the financial motivation is pretty extreme for a top engineer like this. He can probably retire after Facebook goes public if he wants to.
I'll admit, I hadn't put much thought into exactly lucrative it could be to work for Facebook pre-IPO. You make an excellent point and I've changed my mind: I COULD fathom walking away from something like Chrome OS if it meant that kind of financial security in my future.
My guess is that he's poorly managed. Often developers leave a company because of the poor management or bad company viability/culture/etc. Google seems to have good viability/culture/etc, so it's probably the management.
My understanding is that there are few dozens of quality programmer like him at Google, where he doesn't stand out the same way he would stand out if he worked in a group with fewer high profile programmer. I don't think on Google scale there are too many programmers who are indispensable.
Exactly. Am I the only one that doesn't see the attraction in becoming employee #20,000 and having to conform to The Google Way of Doing Things?
Smart people: yes that's nice.
Look good on resume later: sure.
Zillions of employees and a big inherited culture/system and heirarchy with skads of established products and infrastructure that you parachute into: no thanks!
Facebook's not Google-sized... sure, but Facebook's not exactly tiny, either. I bet his team at Facebook will be at least as big as his Chrome team was at Google... and I'm sure he'll have to conform to "The Facebook Way of Doing Things." Honestly, I'm not seeing the difference, other than the pre-IPO potential.
With the rumors of an official x86 Android port in the works maybe ChromeOS doesn't have much of a future? Their dual-OS strategy always seemed awkward to me.
With this, and the rumor of Google starting a new Facebook competing service, is the war between Google->Facebook heating up in the same way that Google->Apple has?
Why does Google feel the need to dominate every corner of our Internet experience? Is it because their eventual business model is to wrap ads on all content everywhere? Facebook's business model is to add every physical item to the social graph, so I suppose there are natural conflicts there.
Why does Microsoft need to be in the gaming market?
In short, because they can expand there and expect to succeed since the fields are closely related, and any short comings can be fixed by throwing money at them.
Yes, Google is trying to own the internet from the power lines it runs on, the air waves it transmits on, to the machines used to access it.
Why do you think Henry Ford owned a steel mill? Do you think that he shouldn't have entered the steel market and just bought steel from the existing mills?
Facebook is increasingly becoming "the internet" for a lot of people. They interact with businesses there, communicate with peers, keep up on what is new, enjoys games and entertainment, etc. Facebook, without doubt, wants to be your internet. They want to wrap their ads around everything you can do.
Google is the same. As is Microsoft. As is Apple. As is everyone else.
Am I the only one that thinks that a merger between Facebook and Google would be a juggernaut in terms of being a one-stop shop for unified online user activity awareness and advertising?
Seems like a winning strategy. Facebook is the Peter Pan of Silicon Valley right now. The "grownups" don't stand a chance -- you can never go back to being pre-IPO again.
Put these two new people together with Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, brought to Facebook almost three years ago and Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, the creators of Gmail, Adsense and Friendfeed, acquired just under one year ago, and what do you get? A monster team with the experience to create a compelling, fully wrap-around internet experience for hundreds of millions of users.
Also am I the only one who finds it a little odd that Facebook sends out press alerts about which engineers it snagged from which companies? I understand why some people - or at least, some websites - would care, it just all sounds so silly in the end.