Hacker News Reader

My take when he says he "missed mobile" is that he regrets that Facebook doesn't own the platform. Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp are enormously successful apps, but because Apple & Google own the OS, they are vulnerable. Apple's introduction of App Tracking Transparency and the way Facebook have struggled against this show the nature of their postion.

View on HN

Google bought Android in 2005, the iPhone was released in 2007, and other important companies (Microsoft, BlackBerry, Nokia) were also doing phone plays which would later fail.

Facebook was still in its infancy as an internet company back then and I doubt they would’ve been able to carry out a hardware or OS play without extremely diluting its focus. But sure, if they had done so and succeeded despite the minimal odds they would be in a totally dominant position right now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com