Facebook is making its own OS to free itself from Google's shackles

Going its own way

Facebook wants its own mobile OS so hardware like its Oculus VR headsets isn't tied down by the restrictions of Android.

As reported by the knowledge, Facebook wants its own platform to avoid other companies throwing its plans astray, whether it's built in-house or in partnership with another developer.

"We actually need to form sure subsequent generation has space for us,” said Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice chairman of hardware, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we will trust the marketplace or competitors to make sure that’s the case. then we’re gonna roll in the hay ourselves.”

This isn't the primary time Facebook has considered creating its own OS. Back in 2013, one among the company's senior developers revealed that it had considered developing an OS for Facebook Home – a project that replaced your phone's usual home screen with something based around social features.

Facebook considered building an OS from scratch or creating an Android fork before deciding on an interface layer that sat on top of Android and easily changed its regular interface. The app received negative reviews and was abandoned within months of its release.

"The OS path was the smallest amount fleshed-out of the paths," director of mobile engineering Cory Ondrejka said.

"Mark [Zuckerberg] talked on launch day that he wanted to create something for everybody. It's hard to urge to the sort of scale that's necessary for us [when building an OS]. We wanted range in front of many many people – even a successful OS would only give that have to a couple of of them."

However, now that Facebook has extended its reach beyond phones to other hardware, it is sensible for it to revisit the thought.

Facebook has no plans to finish the development of its iOS and Android apps, but it'll be interesting to ascertain where this new project leads and whether its new direction proves more successful than Facebook Home.