4 ms·

I believe this acquisition was also a play to acquire more engineering talent. Through this acquisition they acquired John Carmack which is a fairly famous engi

by debt 13y ago

I believe this acquisition was also a play to acquire more engineering talent. Through this acquisition they acquired John Carmack which is a fairly famous engineer amongst the tech community. That component alone strikes me as an incredibly awesome PR move in terms of recruitment. As far as I'm concerned Facebook is the only competitor to Google at this point. Facebook is just trying to keep pace. I assume they're going to do many awesome things in the near future that aren't necessarily aligned with their current business model in order to keep up that pace.

cwyers 13y ago
Carmack left iD because they wouldn't let him work on the sort of stuff he wanted to work on. I see no reason he'd stick around Faceulus as an acquihire; if he's working at Facebook in the future, it's because they're letting Oculus do what it was doing when Facebook bought it.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  > if he's working at Facebook in the future ... beyond what's required by contract
- wavefunction 13y ago
  @ hack_edu Contracts can be broken. I really doubt John Carmack has to do anything he doesn't want to do. It will be the canary in the coalmine as far as whether I purchase an Oculus HMD when they release. I do hate this "winner-take-all" situation where a few tech companies in the US acquire every single cutting edge company.
  - beedogs 13y ago
    An effective FTC and more widespread use of the Sherman act would be nice in the US.
    - stefan_kendall3 13y ago
      This would destroy most of the business models of most of the companies on this website. I fail to see how a social media company buying a headset manufacturer would even hint at anti-trust.
s3r3nity 13y ago
>Facebook is the only competitor to Google at this point I wouldn't discount some of the recent moves my Microsoft and its new CEO -- they seem like they're moving fast and trying to become the old MSFT we used to love (or at least I used to.) Never count Bing out of the fight =)

by debt 13y ago

cwyers 13y ago

Carmack left iD because they wouldn't let him work on the sort of stuff he wanted to work on. I see no reason he'd stick around Faceulus as an acquihire; if he's working at Facebook in the future, it's because they're letting Oculus do what it was doing when Facebook bought it.

hack_edu 13y ago
> if he's working at Facebook in the future ... beyond what's required by contract
wavefunction 13y ago
@ hack_edu Contracts can be broken. I really doubt John Carmack has to do anything he doesn't want to do. It will be the canary in the coalmine as far as whether I purchase an Oculus HMD when they release. I do hate this "winner-take-all" situation where a few tech companies in the US acquire every single cutting edge company.
- beedogs 13y ago
  An effective FTC and more widespread use of the Sherman act would be nice in the US.
  - stefan_kendall3 13y ago
    This would destroy most of the business models of most of the companies on this website. I fail to see how a social media company buying a headset manufacturer would even hint at anti-trust.

s3r3nity 13y ago

>Facebook is the only competitor to Google at this point I wouldn't discount some of the recent moves my Microsoft and its new CEO -- they seem like they're moving fast and trying to become the old MSFT we used to love (or at least I used to.) Never count Bing out of the fight =)