[joshus]

Facebook's core advantage is the social graph, not the infrastructure operation, which is Google's thing. Consequently, Facebook has tight grip on the access of its graph whereas Google keeps the secrets about its search algorithm and server setup. By open-source it, Facebook is not only getting good PR but also undercutting the competitor.

[zipdog]

This is a nice benefit of two companies competing asynchronously (each has a different core competency). The open source community gets the non-core competency of both.

Now if only there was a company whose non-core competency was Google-style spelling check ("Did you mean to search for..")

[riffer]

Now if only there was a company whose non-core competency was Google-style spelling check

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd251071.aspx

[chopsueyar]

Sweet, we get self-driving cars and commodity headless servers.