Microsoft: Facebook Home Is So "Two Years Ago"

Yesterday, Facebook unveiled Facebook Home, which is a new home screen app launcher of sorts that Android users will be able to get for free from the Google Play store starting April 12. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kept reiterating that companies need to put people first and not apps. However, Microsoft says they had the same idea two years ago, so what's new?

In a company blog post by Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications, Frank Shaw jokes that he tuned into the Facebook Home event yesterday "not to see if it was still April Fools Day, but to see if it was somehow still 2011." Shaw says that "the content of the presentation was remarkably similar to the launch event...for Windows Phone two years ago."

Shaw says that the main theme behind creating Windows Phone 7 Mango was to "put people first." It's even mentioned in a YouTube video that Microsoft uploaded back in August 2011 (seen below). So essentially, Facebook certainly wasn't the first company to come up with such a philosophy, but it sure seemed like they tried to make it look like their own.

Furthermore, Shaw bashes Android and says that Microsoft understands Facebook's reasoning behind wanting to "find a way to bring similar functionality to a platform that is sadly lacking it," and also notes that Google's OS "is complicated enough without adding another skin built around another metaphor, on top of what is already a custom variant of the OS."

Shaw wasn't done yet, however, and he says that Microsoft applauds Facebook's effort on giving "some Android owners a taste of what a 'people-centric' phone can be like," however Shaw wants to recommend that people should "get the real thing, and simply upgrade to a Windows Phone." And once you have it all set up, Microsoft promises "you'll be feeling even more at 'home'."