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Facebook buys Parse

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Re: Facebook buys Parse

#62
post #34

Here's my speculation: Facebook bought Parse to attempt to own mobile usage data. Draw parallels with what Google did when they bought Urchin to form Google Analytics. I don't think Facebook cares about creating developer experiences. I think they care about having tracking hooks into mobile applications.

That's incorrect.

Why? Makes sense to me. Why else would Facebook want to "power my app" with Parse?

Haven't they always only offered developer services for their own platform and not the wider web?

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our focus on quality in product and documentation got us to this point so we're not going to change that strategy anytime soon :-)

Unfortunately, intentions about how you'll operate after an acquisition are just wishes. There's a huge corporate political apparatus that just paid a lot of money for the right to implant their thumb print on how you do things. You may be able to push that day forward, but unless you wind up in charge, there's not much long-term hope. Congratulations on the acquisition, but sorry about the acquisition.

I've been through an acquisition before. We're not going into this without having thought through the future.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#65
post #3

Congrats to the Parse team!! As a customer, not necessarily happy about this. I don't like Doug Purdy's quote, "We don’t intend to change this." We use Parse and love it. I really hope they maintain some autonomy as to not get sucked into the "move fast and break things" or "documentation? f--k it." Nonetheless, probably makes a lot of sense for Facebook's mobile strategy.

Our focus on quality in product and documentation got us to this point so we're not going to change that strategy anytime soon :-)

What did your revenues look like?

This acquisition doesn't really tell us if Parse, based around a proprietary SDK, had a viable business model or not.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#66
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it? Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win) Parse has an iOS data object that syncs properly, whereas there is no evidence that any developer has ever gotten Apple's own iCloud + Core Data to sync properly at the record level. Parse is cross platform so you can easily get the same…

> Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win) er, what? It's an afternoon's worth of work, involving basic PKI and TCP sockets. I know it's an afternoon's worth of work, because I've done it in an afternoon.

It's still an afternoon's worth of headache. Parse is just the time it takes to set up the certs, profile and configure your app. Plus, doing it DIY means you have to maintain a system for sending the notifications, whereas Parse provides that for you.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#68
post #51
post #12

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/loc…

you 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 faceboo…

straight off the parse blog:

> Q: Will Parse apps have to use Facebook functionality? No.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#69

Shout out to HN favorite grellas for being our counsel. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas

Thanks, Ilya - amazing outcome and richly deserved. A wonderful group of founders and a supportive and first-class group of investors.
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