According to website The Information, the tests were designed to assess user's loyalty.

However, it found users carried on using the app despite the issues.

 'People never stopped coming back,' a person familiar with the tests told The Information.

The tests were part of a 'doomsday project' to see how the site could function without Google, the Information claims.

'Facebook has been secretly preparing contingency measures to allow its apps to operate on Android phones without going through Google’s app store, according to people who have been involved in different parts of the strategy,' wrote Amir Efrati.

'Facebook’s goal is to be ready in case it has an intractable conflict with Google, which operates the Android mobile operating system, over future rules governing how apps can function on Android.'

The firm is believed to be developing its own app store to bypass Google's along wiht a way users can pay for apps and services. 

Amazon already runs its own Android App store. 

The report also claims Facebook has been investigating working more closely with phone developers to try and bypass Google and the tight controls it places on Android apps.

Mark Zuckerberg also reveals he wants to build an artificially intelligent assistant in 2016 to help run his home and help him at work.

Zuckerberg, who commits to a new personal challenge every year, revealed his plan in a Facebook post.

'You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,' Zuckerberg wrote, referring to an artificially intelligent butler who appears in the Marvel comic books and movies.

Zuckerberg will start the project by exploring existing technology, he wrote. 

He will then begin teaching the technology to understand his voice so that it will learn to control everything in his home, such as music, lights and temperature.

His plans also include teaching the assistant to let friends into his home by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell, Zuckerberg wrote. 

The assistant will visualise data to support Zuckerberg at work, he continued.

'This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself,' Zuckerberg wrote. 'I'm looking forward to sharing what I learn over the course of the year.'

It was recently revealed Facebook is working on building an 'artificial brain' - one that it hopes to turn into a virtual personal assistant that can also sort through a mountain of photos, videos and comments posted by its next billion or so users.

Called M, it is believed to have been named after James Bond's secretary, Moneypenny.

Facebook's artificial intelligence team revealed its work at an industry conference this week.

Among its accomplishments are the development of software that can analyse a photo and answer questions about what it shows, or study a picture of toy blocks and predict whether they will fall over.

(dailymail.co.uk)