It’s the VE Day holiday in much of Europe today, and today also marks the global launch of Angry Birds on Facebook Messenger. In a pan-European alliance, Finnish creator of the original Angry Birds game, Rovio, partnered with our Dutch portfolio company CoolGames to produce an HTML5 version of Angry Birds for release on the FB Messenger’s Instant Games platform.

It’s astounding how far HTML5 has come in replicating native app experiences, and Angry Birds demonstrates this. Congratulations to the Rovio and CoolGames teams for pushing the envelope. With FB Messenger leading the way and other messaging platforms following suit (LINE, Kakao Talk, etc.), casual games may prove the beachhead for a future post-app world.

Here’s the new Angry Birds trailer video for those interested. Feel free to give the game a try. I certainly plan to do so.