Facebook buys Parse

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.