In a sign of broader ambitions, Facebook opens hardware lab

Facebook built its fortune on the internet, that non-physical space where people share updates and digital videos with friends. But deep inside its Silicon Valley headquarters, engineers have stocked a new lab with computerized lathes, industrial mills and tools for making physical goods.

It's not a factory for mass-producing smartphones or other consumer products. Rather, it's where engineers will be working on some of the high-tech gadgetry needed for the company's long-term plans to connect people through smart devices, virtual-reality headsets and high-flying drones that deliver internet signals via laser to remote parts of the world.

And like Google's celebrated X lab, where the internet search giant pursues "moonshot" projects such as self-driving cars, Facebook's new research facility demonstrates that in Silicon Valley, leading tech companies are rarely content to keep doing the same thing.