SAN JOSE, CALIF — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg squared off against the federal government in a California courtroom on Tuesday, as regulators push to stop the tech giant from buying up small companies and instead force them to develop their own products.
“Historically, most of the major platform providers have built some of the key apps,” Zuckerberg said in court, referring to the company’s Meta Quest virtual reality headset. However, FTC attorney Abby Dennis pushed Zuckerberg to say that as far back as 2015, he planned to build most of the apps for its then-fledgling VR operation itself.
And at the end of his testimony, under questioning from U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, Zuckerberg said a key reason for building the so-called Metaverse is to get out from under the control of Apple, and to a lesser extent, Google, whichthrough their stranglehold over the mobile phone industry. Earlier trial testimony revealed that Meta decided to purchase Within in part after hearing rumors that Apple was also looking to acquire it.
While Zuckerberg said it would not be good if Meta owned every developer, he said “There’s a limit to what [start-up] founders can do with a platform. Having a tighter feedback loop between the developer and platform” can help improve the platform in way that benefits the whole market. According to previous trial testimony Meta had a project, code-named “Operation Twinkie,” to partner with fitness equipment maker Peloton and build out its own virtual reality product.
Zuckerberg stressed that while fitness apps are valuable for expanding virtual reality beyond a core group of gamers that skews largely young and male, it was not the most crucial part of Meta’s plans. “Fitness was probably the fourth or fifth use case,” he said.
It’s way better for smaller companies if Meta just creates their own version of the product & squeezes the smaller companies out. Who wants $440 million anyway? 🙄
How is what Facebook doing any different than the 2 major political parties. They haven’t created an original idea in decades. They just steal the popular ones from Third Parties.