> The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp
Splitting those two properties off would be fantastic.
I know it's a pipe dream, but an independent Oculus would make me so happy. I suspect this is impossible due to the early nature of the VR market. Maybe just an FTC requirement _not_ to require a FB login?
There's also a bunch of social features embedded in the Steam client; I wouldn't be surprised if regulators took exception to any acquisition by another company with a social network.
Seems a bit short-sighted because if Oculus becomes the dominant VR platform that Facebook envisions it to be then it's going to dwarf instagram in terms of economic importance (for advertisers and users) over the long term.
That's a big if, one that hinges on way too many things to be able to successfully argue in court about:
1) VR ever becoming a huge player. It might. It might not. Right now there's no real evidence that VR will actually become a big deal, and Facebook could argue that this is a niche offering that can't be anti-competitive because there's no real market yet.
2) The feasibility of VR technology independent of major vendors. There's a strong possibility that without a huge R&D budget VR will never overcome the hurdles that might keep it out of the mainstream. Facebook could argue that removing Oculus would doom VR to failure in the market.
3) The Sirus/XM merger removed 100% of satellite radio competition (there's only one vendor left after the merger), but both Sirius and XM successfully argued that the market isn't big enough to support multiple vendors. Facebook could argue a similar case, that for the health of the VR market there should be fewer competitors.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if any of those would be winning arguments, but based on previous anti-trust cases I've followed that would be the strategy I would expect. And it might be why the FTC didn't go down that path.
The flip side of it is that VR isn't mature enough for a company like Oculus to succeed independently. Having the resources of Facebook behind it will help the VR market as a whole (for now).
-What if they're really comfy when they get slim, and people use them all the time, even for essentially web browsing.
-Later models can easily have internal and mouth facing cameras so you can smile at people in VR
-Let's intimately observe the finest twitch of every expression felt by our users, peering deep into their minds, learning more about how to manipulate and destroy humans than anyone ever thought possible.
Damn straight. The prospect of how much you can learn about human reactions is INCREDIBLE. Eye and mouth tracking is everything, here: it would be turning a wide variety of human behavior study into Big Data and straightforward machine learning.
What would you do with it? What wouldn't you do with it?
> I know it's a pipe dream, but an independent Oculus would make me so happy
While that would cool for short-term, independent Oculus can stagnate. VR still needs many more billions to be truly usable, and I don't think independent company will be able to fund it.
My experience has been that technology is far more likely to stagnate at BigCo than SmallCo - especially if SmallCo's only source of revenue is said technology.
If they are dumping billions into manufacturing, and selling at a loss, maybe that's a problem. If they are dumping billions in to R&D and improving the tech, then let them do it.
At some point it needs to be illegal. When a large company of 30000 employees starts wiping out entire industries with cash buffers, you can see why this is just wrong and monopolistic/oligopolistic behavior.
There's a large difference between using your profits to crush competition in another area, versus setting dollar bills on fire in the pursuit of growth.
There should be regulations around both of these, but they'll need to be different ones.
I agree that this maybe should be illegal, but on the flip what is forcing the other companies to operate at a loss? I would think the name “Facebook” backing oculus means more than a low price
I think down the line that would be true, but Facebook's willingness to burn literal billions of dollars at this point is basically the only thing carrying VR. Id love to see it split off in the future though.
I'm not sure big money is what is needed to create a flourishing VR sector. The appeal of VR has always been creating virtual experiences that are different and unique. honestly I think it makes much more sense for that scene to be decentralised and independent. Kind of like Minecraft came about, I have trouble imagining it as some sort big money project.
I don't think the issue with VR at this point is so much technical than it is that nobody's yet been creative enough to make something truly unique with it.
Agree. VR is not more than a novelty and gaming tool yet. Gaming is a huge potential, but I think the real use cases haven't been proven out yet.
I'm still a believer, but I suspect there are other non-VR technologies that either need to catch up or just figure out how to dovetail for VR to be anything other than a novelty.
Just wait until you slip into the Oculus 5 and enjoy a movie night with your friends anywhere in the world!
Oh what’s that? Your eyes looked at the logo on the shirt the hero is wearing, are you perhaps interested in learning more about where you could buy it?
Or, if the Oculus becomes the most popular VR equipment, think about the advertising can be shown to people in VR Chat rooms, VR films, virtual cinemas..... all bound to a single company.
considering some of the things that facebook has been used for it should be very careful about what it does with VR/AR and the potential for use as a HUD facilitating an attacker and providing them with a support team
> It's unfair to Zuck for being very visionary about this.
I personally disagree with the idea that Zuck was being a "visionary" here. I don't think buying Instagram for $1bn was a particularly visionary move but rather just... cautious. Facebook also bought Gowalla, Lightbox.com, Friendly, TBH and tried to buy Snapchat, Musically (since merged into TikTok), Houseparty, etc. All these are/were competitors and threats. Some were small, some were big. Some worked out and grew, others didn't.
The Instagram acquisition happened fairly early on, so it makes sense that it was worth a lot of money to Facebook. Now that Facebook is huge it can get turned down by a company like Snapchat, and it'll just go ahead and copy/improve its features with its much-larger team, capital, and user-base. Back then, buying the competitor was the best option since Facebook didn't have as many resources or reasons to believe they could compete as effectively.
Moreover, I'd argue the reason Instagram worked out so well is precisely because it got acquired by Facebook. Had Instagram had to figure out its own monetization strategy, find its own clients, compete with the established players, build its own infrastructure, etc. it probably wouldn't have been able to grow as much or as quickly.
You don't just look at Instagram when you evaluate the acquisition, you look at Facebook also.
Facebook was huge, and Instagram didn't represent anything Facebook couldn't just build themselves, other than the growing user base. So there is your rationale, the behemoth shouldn't be completely free to consolidate users. Of course the details of how big is too big and so on are the hard part.
> From an entrepreneurial point of view I wonder how it will affect the future of big tech players acquiring other companies.
It won't.
The full power of the United States does not reverse all those shares you sold to a big tech company, or sold as a big shareholder of a big tech company.
If the market tolerates a price, based on their own exuberance and view of future revenues, that is fine here, and the incentives will continue to promote near term profits with a who-gives-a-shit slim possibility of cleanup by the regulators.
Corporations are just a conduit for money, and the regulators only enforce actions on the conduit, and thats a maybe.
From a privacy point of view it doesn't matter who collects it so long as the FBI and US military can retrieve it on-demand without a warrant or probable cause under FAA 702.
I'm holding off on merging my Oculus and Facebook accounts as long as possible in hopes that someone tells them to get the hell out of here with that nonsense.
Will splitting off Instagram make a meaningful difference given how little protections there are around selling advertising data?
I agree we would’ve been better off if they had never been allowed to buy Instagram AND we had meaningful laws in place, but I don’t see how this fundamentally changes things given where we are now.
1. That FB split into N independent companies, whereupon each share of FB would become 1 share in each of N companies.
2. That the supermajor shareholders (say, more than 10% of any company) each pick at most one company to retain that interest in, and sell off shares in the other companies until they had less than 10% of each of those).
3. That the new companies avoid overlapping directors.
It would be a long time in court. See the breakup of AT&T.
> The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp