Facebook's utterly unnecessary Meta rebrand has hit the Play Store

The metaveEeErrRse is coming

One of the highlights, or rather, weirdest moments of 2021 was when Facebook announced its abrupt name-change. From that point onwards, the company itself has been known as Meta, coinciding with news of its increased focus on this whole “metaverse” thing. In the weeks that followed we started to see the new Meta name pop up across Facebook's whole ecosystem of apps. That momentum has made it to the Play Store, with the company’s apps now showing that they come from Meta Platforms, Inc.

Earlier today we spotted Meta-made apps including Instagram, WhatsApp, and the Facebook app itself displaying Meta Platforms as their developer, rather than Facebook. All of the company's Android apps will now be found under its brand-new, weird name.

We originally compared this change to Google's rebrand of its corporate identity into Alphabet in 2015, where everything basically stayed the same regarding its consumer-facing branding. Everyone still knows Google as, well… Google. Here, though, Meta is trying really hard to convince people that it's more than just an evil social media corporation — and also, that the metaverse is actually going to be a thing people will want (we’re not holding our breath).

So remember — if you're going to look for a Facebook app, you'll now find it's published by Meta. We're not sure what you're going to do with that information, but now you know it.

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