"Group of Companies"
This is exactly the direction I see Facebook heading. They also realised people aren't too keen on one app doing it all. Whether that's for privacy reasons, I suspect not. I suspect it's much more about the illusion of choice, i.e. if I don't like X any more, I can move to Y. And I only do it for that single use case, not upend my entire life, i.e. swapping GMaps for Waze or for WeGo is easier than switching Android to/from Apple.
What Facebook is now doing is making all the connections behind the scenes, out of sight. Branding has already changed: InstaGram, WhatsApp "from facebook". And more and more things like events and marketplace and payments and business-hosting, are added to existing apps. Other offerings might become separate apps, but behind the scenes is one humongous shared data model into which and from which they all feed. In the mean time people continue to think they're exercising choice.
I'm starting to believe that we need some regulation that says if you've accumulated more than X amount of data regarding more than Y percent of the population, you must make that data available to third parties on an equal access/non-disciminatory manner. It introduces a return-on-investment calculation compared to "owning it all" and levels the playing field for new entrants into the market. Also players can survive in niche markets, because the data for their niche still has market value.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
