Believe it or not, Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer, is forcing an untold number of Facebook employees to drop their iPhones for Android phones.

"I am mandating a switch of a whole bunch of my team over to Android, just because people, when left up to their own devices, will often prefer an iPhone," Cox said last week during a briefing with an unusually large collection of reporters and many others watching via online video from locations in other parts of the world. No, Facebook has not developed some sort of vendetta against Apple. Nor is it compelled to suddenly endorse the products of arch-rival Google. This is a practical decision.

Though the iPhone may be the preferred device in Silicon Valley, Facebook now serves over 1.5 billion people across the globe, and a vast swath of these people—especially newer users in emerging markets—use the social network on Android phones. As Facebook seeks to reach ever more people around the world, Cox says, he wants a good portion of his team on the world's most popular mobile platform "so that they can be reporting bugs and living in the same experience that most Facebook users experience today." Make no mistake: his team isn't small. He's the company's chief product officer.

While it may not be a vendetta against Apple, it sure sounds like a loud political statement of sorts. For more on this story, click here.

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