FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey
Michael Arrington
70 comments »
Their first acquisition: Facebook has bought Parakey, the yet-to-launch “web operating system” created by Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Facebook should be issuing a press release this afternoon.
Parakey was founded in 2005 and raised a seed round of financing from Sequoia Capital (although this was never confirmed). There is a good background story on Parakey, which will include both browser and client software, here.
As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.” Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox’s…Parakey is intended to be a platform for tools that can manipulate just about anything on your hard drive—e-mail, photos, videos, recipes, calendars. In fact, it looks like a fairly ordinary Web site, which you can edit. You can go online, click through your files and view the contents, even tweak them. You can also check off the stuff you want the rest of the world to be able to see. Others can do so by visiting your Parakey site, just as they would surf anywhere else on the Web. Best of all, the part of Parakey that’s online communicates with the part of Parakey running on your home computer, synchronizing the contents of your Parakey pages with their latest versions on your computer. That means you can do the work of updating your site off-line, too.
Update: Was Google a bidder for Parakey? One source says they were, but couldn’t compete with Facebooks pre-IPO stock. Facebook isn’t saying if this was a stock or cash deal, but it wouldn’t be dumb to assume that Facebook stock was at least part of the acquisition price. In an IPO the value of that stock would probably increase dramatically, giving the Parakey stockholders a nice additional return on investment.
wow, not that’s a curve ball.. an online os
What is the benifit of this?
This is really interesting… is FB becoming the new Google? I imagine this will be the first of many acquisitions, and that entrepreneurs will say “I would like to be acquired by Google, or eBay, or … FaceBook…”
Cool stuff.
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
:: managing career relationships ::
I just wrote on Facebook Talk that I suspect this will be something similar to Pownce. From what I understand, Parakey is something that’s supposed to help in speeding up and easing the process of sharing files, pictures, videos, etc. Instead of uploading a picture from your digital camera to your computer then to Flickr, then sending out a link of it to all your friends, this is supposed to somehow simplify the process.
If so, it’s not hard to imagine that Facebook might somehow integrate this into the site and make it even easier to share stuff with your friends. Or am I misinterpreting what Parakey is all about?
Don’t even want to think about what there going to do with this, good luck to them though haha.
Yeah I guess good for them for thinking big. If Parakey does anything close to what it claims, it should have some potential.
Facebook is leading the industry, I know I’d want this technology.
I think that meebo is another likely acquisition target. if facebook doesn’t acquire them, i’m not sure who will.
Why would they “value it way beyond the market value”? Wouldn’t that require to know more than the market does?
I’d assume they just got more valuable stock, even at current values, or care about the product (likely) and see a better future for it with facebook (less likely).
I had no idea this would be something they would consider. Ambitious company indeed, and their IPO hopes are now more justifiable.
Perhaps many of their recent hires have been e analyzing the best way to leverage the “social graph” in order to best target ads; this leaves MS out of the picture.
Anyone have insight into their recent(last 6-12 months) job postings?
i think this is probably the first bad day in a long while for the Googlers… unimpressive quarterly announcement, potentially competitive acquisition where they come in 2nd place, and all the attention lately has been on Facebook Platform.
i think we just witnessed a changing of the guard.
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Wow, this is big news. I love it!
Mozilla FIREFOX founders…not Mozilla founders.
cool, maybe Joe can afford some time to make firebug work on minefield now..
hats off to FB. it’s the new google? interesting to see how this plays out.
Color me impressed. The F8 platform did a great job of enabling an ecosystem of developers. Once they start acquiring, welcome to the big leagues. And not too long ago we were all talking about Google’s dominance.
On first blush, it seems to me like they may very well have bought Parakey for the talent rather than the actual product. The quality of the Parakey product hasn’t been verified but the co-founders have certainly shown themselves valuable.
#11…. LOL. A “changing of the guard”? Google is earning almost a BILLION per quarter and growing. Facebook MIGHT be grossing 10% of that a year. The minute FB reveals to the world how it plans to make money — serious money that is worth all this hullabaloo — then I will be impressed. Until then it’s a company that has very cool (albeit simple) technology.
Why are people comparing them to Google? Do they come even close to Google’s quarterly profit?
1. Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt conceived and started the Firefox branching of the Mozilla project. Not Mozilla codebase, not Mozilla Corporation, and not Mozilla Foundation. Jim Hewitt was also a confounder.
2. ZuckerBORG just two days ago in the Time interview said NO IPO, so obviously that means an IPO within a year, otherwise why would anyone want Facebook options compared to proven Google options for the same vesting period?
#11 - Google missed earning by 1%, which yes is significant, but they were at the top range of revenue projections. Their stock is down 7%, which could be a buying opportunity based on their last miss, when their stock was down 15%. Now they are at ~$500 / share…
More info: http://www.thestreet.com/_yaho.....;cm_ite=NA\
As for this purchase by Facebook, they obviously are interested in really extending their brand and feature set. I see a lot of opportunities in leveraging the web operating system. The key question will be if they can actually integrate it in a way that people will use it.
yes, these are all valid points, but what does Concrete Stain think about it?
#11 - Google does at least one acquisition per week. Losing one unreleased/untested product is probably not a big deal for them. We can’t tell how interested Google was in the first place and how many buyers there were. I mean, for all we know there could have been only two potential buyers and Google being the 2nd, with a very low interest. But having the name Google anywhere definately makes it sound more valuable.
sounds like the guy got a job. no product, 2005, seed round…
Ray Ozzie was hired by Microsoft for this exact purpose. I’m surprised Google didn’t get them considering their app software . No one can deny that their Facebook Apps is exploding and times are exciting to see where this goes!
I heard ParaKey is OPEN-SOURCE - how does that work in a for-profit company acquisition - whats the monetization engine. Does Facebook distribute this “OS” and make facebook the default social network? I am so confused. How do you get the mass market adoption of this product and and deal with the security issues and server space required to make this work without some kind of incredible monetization engine. And why would anyone develop for this platform? Same reasons they develop for Facebook? At some point Facebook as to take a cut of revenue/earnings of applications or charge for API calls or something. Unlike a regular OS, you can’t sell this to people - they’ll never use it because MS will come up with a free version because they have the resources. Am I totally off the mark here?
I wouldn’t say Blake Ross founded Mozilla, as he was born in 1985, and was the founder of Firefox… Mozilla was created as the open-source Netscape code, once Netscape began to go under.
Still, the tech is awesome, but is it really going to be well utilized by the folks at Neo-Myspace….ahem….i mean, Facebook?
How long have you been doing crunchbase.com I just noticed it now in this post. I haven’t seen any posts in the blogsophere or mention of it from you. Maybe I missed something. Looks like a good addition.
You see Microsoft, Google, Yahoo don’t want to make Webos webpage.
Here’s why.
1. Nobody like bookmark or use WEBOS start page.
2. It’s too slow, annoying, and drives users nuts.
3. Using windows windows
4. Browser problems: Opera, IE, Firefox, etc.
5. They lose marketshare less than 1 second.
6. Investors predicted webos crashed at wall street; price will drop
7. If yahoo,google,msn make WEBOS. They will screw up Advertisment.
8. People perfer simple layout.
9. It’s waste of time playing with drag drop and design UI.
10. You will see lots of WebOS companies: It’s full of nonprofit and non-business killer app.
If Facebook enter IPO and aquire parakey webos. Watch the stock. It’s aren’t doing so good.
I agree with some of the other posters that this was probably a talent acquisition over the actual product, though the product is pretty cool. Seriously though, who wouldn’t want these guys to work for them?
As for some of the comments about how Facebook can’t be compared to Google because Facebook doesn’t make as much money as Google. Google doesn’t make nearly as much money as Microsoft and yet those two corporations are compared all the time…-Metagg
Damn, I hate reading @31 — “Mark Zuckerberg’s Manifesto”.
It makes me feel like I don’t want to sell my product to facebook.
Ontario had capital of $537.604 billion. They banned facebook for good. They don’t want facebook stockmarket enter canada. They also don’t want illegal security breach enter government computers.
I think that’s smart move for canadians.
Well there are more advanced Web Operating Systems out there which are already fully functional and launched such as the Global Hosted Operating SysTem http://G.ho.st
I think “operating system” was a poor choice of words, misleading. It doesn’t really interface with your hardware–not an operating system. What you’re talking about sounds more like a GUI for storing files, not an OS.
It’s funny that people are disparaging the comparison of Facebook to Google by pointing out that Facebook’s revenue is tiny compared to Google’s.
Go back five years or so and you’ll hear the same comments - about Google and Yahoo.
@35 said it correct.
All you need is bootup disk, Plan 9 OS, free internet line, and real time operating system boot up not from freedos, reactos, Unix, Windows, Apple, and Linux.
You need very rare operating system that opens like magic. You need some one who born 1970-80s developers. I think that’s web 5.0. The whole country want real bootup web os than using firefox, ie, etc…
YCombinator was also a key backer of Parakey!
“Why are people comparing them to Google? Do they come even close to Google’s quarterly profit?”
now now, this is web2.0. Its all about the hype.
Yawn. No one cares. Parakey is worthless. Facebook was just acquiring two smart engineers. Google does this all the time. All you Facebook fanboys are in such a hissy fit over this that it’s hilarious.
Such hype.
Where is the impact of facebook on real profits of people?…google does have and they focus even more on that.
As far as WebOS is concerned, yes sure but even that will leverage power of desktop software….
ASk developers to give up powers of their own desktop software for limitation ridden webos…and webos companies ….????
These apps definetly make life easy in many ways…the war will end when its really a breeze….it can be very very powerful software and storage space on an inch square of chip…..
Lame.
Do you know what an operating system is? You still need windows/linux/osx in order to run this pile, so its not an operating system. This is pure hype and fodder for the even lamer gigaom/techcrunh/webware fanboys.
Predictions on the next acquisition, anyone?
Joe Hewitt is probably the raddest dude ever.
http://joehewitt.com/
He also just released a framework-type-thing for creating iPhone apps. I cant wait to see what he does at Facebook….call me a fanboy..who gives a shit.
Well, Facebook just started. They didn´t reveal the price because they don´t want to be known the huge amount of money they are doing. And I don´t think that Google was a bidder.
I’m impressed, Blake and Joe pulled it all off very well–announce a non-existent startup, gather big amounts of press after being paraded around by the media as “starting Mozilla” and then build up a bunch of essentially skill equity that they can throw their weight around when they want to figure out a place to work for real.
Nonetheless, I don’t understand what all this hype around Parakey was in the first place, besides being associated with Blake. Blake never said anything revolutionary, that no one has said before. There isn’t really a market for a Web “OS”, just look at all the unused elaborate contenders already. Whatever becomes the equivalent of an OS is going to be not one at all. The OS interface is due for a revision. The Web “OS” will solve all of your problem’s but it won’t have a desktop and a start-menu etc.
I don’t know why people compare Google with Facebook.
Google search market is a a way bigger than Facebook’s Social networks market. Show me the % of users who are >30 or 35 years old who uses Face book. This is for just young people and google is fore de facto standard in search world.
You can understand the revenue from Ads now.
Anyhow Social network is the next bubble in the Tech market, like internet companies in 2000. Trust me and wait few more years.
Sounds like a pretty sweet new application. Hope it sees the light of day soon.
This whole Facebook stuff does indeed look pretty much like one big hype story;
Nevertheless it would be pretty stupid to underestimate their way of doing business (or at least what seems to be their business model) without giving them a little bit more credit. So let them show us what they got and who knows, it might even work
As far as I am concerned their webOS idea doesn’t look much stranger than the universal search engine back in the 90’s.
btw. here is my blog where I talk about all those stuff slightly more in details
http://itblogium.blogspot.com
yves
To compare parakey, one should certainly be watching WireReach:
http://boxcloud.com
http://www.wiredreach.com/
I am a believer in the desktop/web merging technologies. Call it what you want.
The next wave will be properties that offer a better balance of tools that not only are used to socialize the experience but also to provide more advanced features that are seamlessly integrated with the desktop…. with an emphasis on sharing/sending files and publishing pages.
sull