Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Many companies set up their own, secretive divisions to develop new devices and technologies. There’s Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks division, which produced the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird. Apple assembled a secret working to develop the iPhone. Facebook set up its own division as it delved into hardware in recent years. A new report from CNBC outlines the drama behind the company’s secretive hardware division, Building 8, and how it struggled to develop its own hardware to compete with the likes of Amazon and Google.
Building 8 is the division where Facebook has worked on some of its outlandish ideas, like a system that would allow users to type using their thoughts, modular smartphones, and ultimately, a video-calling device…