Ask HN: Is Facebook still innovating?
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's say, 2 years anyway?
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.
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.
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.