The blogosphere is full of speculations on whether some big company will acquire Facebook or not. Some people are arguing that Facebook will stay independent and move towards an IPO. Whatever be the case, one thing is becoming clear. The chances of Facebook going towards Microsoft is quite unlikely after the recent acquisition of Parakey. This acquisition sheds some light into the plans of Facebook team. They are thinking in really long term and it is evident that they want to make your operating system redundant. Parakey is a platform on which applications that combines the features of both web based apps and desktop apps, can be built. This platform allows seamless integration of the applications with your computer and its devices. Facebook gave some hints about their future plans by acquiring this company. It is quite likely that they are planning to make Facebook your stop shop for all your computing needs. A Facebook platform that can interact directly with your devices is a direct threat to Microsoft’s very existence, when it is already facing an onslaught from Google. So far Microsoft hasn’t shown any inclination to abandon their desktop platform. The recent leak about Windows 7 highlights their continued persistence with Windows desktop. Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook investors are smart enough not to bet the future of their company with another company that is still enamored by their desktop product. Yahoo is still beleaguered to have any credible chance of Facebook acquisition. This leaves Google as the only possible candidate. As Robert Scoble pointed out in his post, Google will be better off if they fix Orkut than buy Facebook. This leaves us with only one likely scenario. Facebook IPO. My take on this topic is that Facebook will develop a much advanced (closed) platform that will make your operating system redundant and enter the IPO market in a strong way.

Tags: Facebook, Social Networking, Social Networks, Google, Microsoft, Orkut, Parakey