Pigs Fly As Facebook And Google Work Together On An Android App
Well, we never thought it would happen because of its intense rivalry with Google, but Facebook is almost ready to launch an official app for Android phones. Hints are already popping up here and there, but I've been able to confirm it.
Context & Ripple Effects
The news lands at a moment when both companies are working their own angles on mobile: Google shipped a redesigned Gmail mobile web app for iPhone and Android the same week, while its Android team was publicly batting down rumors that the 'Donut' release would be version 2.0 with multitouch — a platform still defining itself in public.
For Facebook, the move comes despite what TechCrunch calls an intense rivalry with Google, and while the company fields its second click-fraud lawsuit from an advertiser within a month — making credible new surfaces for user engagement and ad delivery more than a vanity project.
First-order effects
- Android users move from unofficial clients and the mobile web to a first-party Facebook app built alongside Google, giving the platform a marquee social client it previously lacked next to the iPhone.
- Google gets validation for a handset OS still fighting version-confusion perceptions, while Facebook gains a native foothold on the fastest-courting alternative to the iPhone.
Second-order effects
- Apple loses the implicit exclusivity of Facebook's official mobile client, weakening one of the iPhone's everyday-social hooks and handing Android OEMs and carriers a headline app to bundle.
- Third-party Android Facebook wrappers and rival social apps lose their reason to exist on the platform, and Facebook's advertisers get a new mobile inventory source at a time when invalid-click allegations are already straining trust.
Third-order effects
- If rivals can cooperate at the app layer while competing at the OS and ad layers, app-distribution pragmatism becomes a standing feature of the smartphone wars rather than an anomaly.
- A first-party app on a rival's OS deepens each company's dependence on the other's platform decisions — the kind of entanglement that tends to resurface as leverage fights over store terms, data access, and APIs.
The trend: Mobile is pushing fierce web-era rivals into pragmatic distribution alliances, as platforms compete for users through cooperation at the app layer even while battling underneath it.