It’s become a common trope to say that Facebook and Google are vying to become the operating system of the Internet. But there are some very clear hints of that in Facebook’s upcoming new design, which it just opened up to today in a developer sandbox. (You can see it at http://www.new.facebook.com, although [...]

When Facebook acquired Parakey in July, everyone assumed the stockholders of that fledgling startup would be popping the champagne bottles. No matter what the acquisition price (it wasn’t disclosed), if the sellers got Facebook stock in return for their Parakey shares, it would likely be worth a fortune down the road. It turns out that wasn’t [...]

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). [...]