
Ask HN: Is Facebook still innovating? - piecu
We all know that Facebook is busy now implementing (or pretending to implement) some privacy features. But did Facebook do anything innovative in the last, let&#x27;s say, 2 years anyway?
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askafriend
Absolutely. In fact, they _have_ to in order to grow because at their scale,
there is no precedent.

Things like React, lots of open source contributions, being one of the leaders
in AI, being one of the leaders in VR, making huge strides in data center
hardware, delivering internet to underserved regions etc. I could go on and
on. They are absolutely innovative and I think anyone who is involved in the
technology industry deeply would agree.

The thing that people commonly disagree on is the question "to what meaningful
end?".

To that question, I will keep my opinion to myself. Discussion about that on
HN often devolve into meaningless shouting matches and people informing others
that they left Facebook 2 years ago. It's not the type of discussion I want to
be involved in.

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segmondy
Did they ever innovate? What other products has Facebook brought to the world
outside of Facebook that changed the world?

Unless we consider acquisitions such as Instagram, WhatsApp & Oculus. Sure,
they have released interesting tech such as React, Thrift, PyTorch, GraphQL
but I don't consider these innovations in the sense some on here might.

When I think about innovations, I think in terms of consumer products,
products that have changed the world. Outside of search, gmail is heavily
used, google office is sufficiently used, Google pulled off amazing tech in
terms of tech unlike anything anyone has ever seen. Borg, Spanner, etc.

Of all the Facebook tech I mentioned the only one that might be somewhat
innovative is GraphQL. I'm not a windows/C# person, but it reminds of of
"Linq" so it might not be that innovative.

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RelevantPackage
Found this great article a couple of days ago:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/one-family-under-
cox/?utm_...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/one-family-under-
cox/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29)

One thing is for sure: for a company of their size, they're definitely
innovating in terms of management and dominating through their acquisition
strategy.

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iosdevelprss
It seems that after the Zack-Trial, they're experimenting with different
business models though. Dating.. cryptocurrencies.

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StephnyJ
Yup, It is. Just heard they are near to introduce their own digital currency

