When Facebook Home was first unveiled, many observers wondered how Google would react to the overhauled Android experience. As it turns out, company executives have had nothing but kind words for the effort. First there was Eric Schmidt, who described Home as "a tremendous endorsement" of the Google Play ecosystem. Now none other than Matias Duarte (who himself led Android's dramatic visual transformation) has chimed in. "The new Facebook Home shows an incredible amount of polish and attention to design detail, and that didn’t come from a hardware manufacturer," Duarte said in an interview with ABC News.

"With the Home experience, they did a nice job expressing the Facebook experience, but so much of the Google design experience with Ice Cream Sandwich was in there as well," he said. As the HTC First showed us, underneath Facebook Home is a stock version of Android — a labor of design love by Duarte's team that evolved further with Android 4.1. Users get access to the default phone dialer, settings menu, and notifications tray, all of which are less cluttered than many skinned alternatives. But aside from calling out his own hard work, it would seem Duarte is also appreciative of the exhaustive testing Facebook conducted to ensure Home would feel organic and responsive for end users. Clearly Google isn't shy about complementing quality design where warranted.