The social network in blue working on its own operating system in collaboration with Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft co-author of Windows NT.
Facebook will also have its operating system. The indiscretion is reported today by the newspaper The Information which speaks of a project already in the pipeline and carried out in collaboration with Mark Lucovsky, ex Microsoft and co-author of the Windows NT platform. The goal of the initiative is to have an alternative to Android, today at the base of products such as those of the Oculus and Portal lines, albeit with a modified version.
An alternative to Android for Facebook
The hypothesis is reinforced by a statement attributed to Ficus Kirkpatrick, Facebook’s number one for the augmented reality and virtual reality divisions: according to his words “it is possible” that the group is committed in order to no longer be dependent on the Google. The statement by Andrew Bosworth, head of the team working on components and hardware devices, also suggests something very similar. This is what he said:
We want to make sure there is room for us in the next generation. We don’t think we can trust the market or competitors to ensure it does. So we’ll do it ourselves.
Everything seems to suggest the arrival of a software component to be combined with the hardware products destined for the market. These include the aforementioned AR glasses, currently identified with the codename Orion and with design curated by Luxottica, which are expected to reach the market by 2023 (the same year as the Apple model). Then there is another wearable device, currently experimental, designed to connect directly with the brain. The rumours also speak of Mark Zuckerberg’s group working on their own chipset and virtual assistant to be proposed as an alternative to those of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple.
Some will remember that Facebook tried almost a decade ago to package its customization of Android by allocating it to a smartphone specially made by HTC. However, the project has not proved able to find the desired success and ends up being shelved.