3 ms·

> MAGMA Out of curiosity, why do some people change "F" to "M" for Facebook to Meta, but leave the "G" there for Google?

by wdr1 5y ago

analog31 5y ago
Because Google's name change happened long enough ago, that nobody remembers it.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Out of curiosity, why do some people change "F" to "M" for Facebook to Meta, but leave the "G" there for Google? Google is still a major tech company, though it is a subsidiary of Alphabet, while Facebook is now a product (not a subsidiary firm) of Meta, as I understand it.
paxys 5y ago
They are both very different kinds of restructures. Alphabet is a pure holding company. It doesn't have many employees directly working for it (other than top executives, some finance people and other minor overhead). And different Alphabet companies operate fully independently with next to zero sharing of employees, resources, money or tech. When people in these threads say Google, they specifically mean the company which makes up most of Alphabet and works on search, ads etc., not Calico or DeepMind. Meta on the other hand is a rebrand of Facebook (the company). There is no holding structure. If you were a Facebook employee, you now work for Meta. Employees at Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, shared infra teams, and other minor projects all work for Meta as well. Facebook now refers to just the app, nothing else. The different brands are simply products that the company works on, not legal entities in themselves.
- toast0 5y ago
  > Meta on the other hand is a rebrand of Facebook (the company). There is no holding structure. If you were a Facebook employee, you now work for Meta. Employees at Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, shared infra teams, and other minor projects all work for Meta as well. It doesn't make much difference to your line of reasoning, but at least WhatsApp operates as wholy owned subsidiaries, so there is some amount of holding company; note that the terms of service of Instagram are between users and Meta, but tos for WhatsApp is between users and WhatsApp LLC or WhatsApp Ireland Limited depending on the country code of the registered number. Note: I worked for WhatsApp until 2019; I don't know if WA Ireland is a subsidiary of WA LLC or Meta. There's some other overseas WhatsApp legal entities as well, although I don't have a list.
ModernMech 5y ago
Because the whole point of the backronym is and always has always been to sound cool. Microsoft was excluded from FAANG for no other reason than it couldn't fit and still make the acronym cool. It's the same reason the acronym has not been FAAAN; FAANG is obviously cooler. As soon as Facebook became Meta, that opened up all kinds of new acronyms and now Microsoft is in and Netflix is out, because MAGMA is the new hotness.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  I remember in the 90s it was NOISE: Netscape - Oracle - IBM - SUN - Everyone Else.
  - oblio 5y ago
    According to market cap or sales, it should have been: Microsoft + NOISE instead :-)

> MAGMA Out of curiosity, why do some people change "F" to "M" for Facebook to Meta, but leave the "G" there for Google?

by wdr1 5y ago

> MAGMA Out of curiosity, why do some people change "F" to "M" for Facebook to Meta, but leave the "G" there for Google?

analog31 5y ago

Because Google's name change happened long enough ago, that nobody remembers it.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Out of curiosity, why do some people change "F" to "M" for Facebook to Meta, but leave the "G" there for Google? Google is still a major tech company, though it is a subsidiary of Alphabet, while Facebook is now a product (not a subsidiary firm) of Meta, as I understand it.

paxys 5y ago

They are both very different kinds of restructures. Alphabet is a pure holding company. It doesn't have many employees directly working for it (other than top executives, some finance people and other minor overhead). And different Alphabet companies operate fully independently with next to zero sharing of employees, resources, money or tech. When people in these threads say Google, they specifically mean the company which makes up most of Alphabet and works on search, ads etc., not Calico or DeepMind. Meta on the other hand is a rebrand of Facebook (the company). There is no holding structure. If you were a Facebook employee, you now work for Meta. Employees at Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, shared infra teams, and other minor projects all work for Meta as well. Facebook now refers to just the app, nothing else. The different brands are simply products that the company works on, not legal entities in themselves.

toast0 5y ago
> Meta on the other hand is a rebrand of Facebook (the company). There is no holding structure. If you were a Facebook employee, you now work for Meta. Employees at Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, shared infra teams, and other minor projects all work for Meta as well. It doesn't make much difference to your line of reasoning, but at least WhatsApp operates as wholy owned subsidiaries, so there is some amount of holding company; note that the terms of service of Instagram are between users and Meta, but tos for WhatsApp is between users and WhatsApp LLC or WhatsApp Ireland Limited depending on the country code of the registered number. Note: I worked for WhatsApp until 2019; I don't know if WA Ireland is a subsidiary of WA LLC or Meta. There's some other overseas WhatsApp legal entities as well, although I don't have a list.

ModernMech 5y ago

Because the whole point of the backronym is and always has always been to sound cool. Microsoft was excluded from FAANG for no other reason than it couldn't fit and still make the acronym cool. It's the same reason the acronym has not been FAAAN; FAANG is obviously cooler. As soon as Facebook became Meta, that opened up all kinds of new acronyms and now Microsoft is in and Netflix is out, because MAGMA is the new hotness.

cromwellian 5y ago
I remember in the 90s it was NOISE: Netscape - Oracle - IBM - SUN - Everyone Else.
- oblio 5y ago
  According to market cap or sales, it should have been: Microsoft + NOISE instead :-)