Opposite Poles Attract: Facebook joins hands with Google for Android app

Things went topsy-turvy as Facebook was heard to be launching an official app for Google’s Android. While a month ago, Google co-founder Larry Page was seen in a sullen mood after Facebook dropped a big investment plan by the search engine major, which arch-rival Microsoft swept away from under their nose. Facebook’s fall back on Google was airing as grapevine until confirmed by techcrunch today. What’s most sensational is that the app could make it to the Android Market as early as the end of this week.

Well, what’s interesting is that Facebook’s Android app won’t be a full -fledged version as iPhone app. This Facebook app would appear with reduced features like for instance you won’t have an inbox, as the sources suggest. However, it would retain the full Facebook stream that’s what you need most. The Facebook app has been designed to offer the stream and status updates. It includes Facebook’s new Stream API. The updates would appear with a notification number indicating how many items are available at any given time.

Until recently Facebook showed no intentions of building an Android app. The unanswered question that remains - why is Facebook is going out of way to help its arch-rival Google? A deeper insight into the fact reveals that Android phones are all set to give iPhone a run for its money with an estimated two dozen sets to be launched this year. According to the sources, the Android team at Google offered to help and loaned an Android engineer to Facebook. Already, the app is being handled by some Google engineers.

In the meantime, we have all eyes on the next version of Facebook’s iPhone app that are likely to include events like video uploading and so much more.