Parse becomes one of the many strings to Facebook's bow. Parse by itself was a single very good offering. Facebook can now "sunset" Parse whenever they feel like it. My feeling is that Facebook bought Parse for the talent and the mobile knowledge, and not the product itself. I see the Parse engineers being moved out to help Facebook's real mobile strategy move forward. I may be proved wrong, but I'd be scared to invest my entire business on a backend I don't control. I'd be shit-scared to invest my entire business on a backend controlled by Facebook.

Facebook have shown time and time again that they do not care about the privacy of their users. They are not going to get that trust back any time soon. In my opinion the assumption that they could "get away with it" was a long term bad mistake on Zuckerberg's part.

As an aside, I don't post on Facebook anymore once I realised that my deleted data was not really deleted. Even today, almost a year and a half after deleting all my posts, check-ins and photos, my profile still shows 3 "hidden" check-ins. Until a few months ago, a "deleted" (a.k.a hidden) album was still showing in the album count. Facebook has a few bugs when they do their entity counts, which show up their logical rather than physical deletes. Sorry, but when I delete something, I expect it to be deleted, not just marked as deleted.

I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, and I really can't throw a 8000 lb gorilla very far.

My guess is that startups mostly are about users. Great and innovative service, good support and energy. As soon as some big company acquires it, they start pushing things down your throat you may not like. A small company can't abuse you in that way since they must hold on users with both hands to survive. Big companies can't care less about you and they have the $$ to live just as well without you.