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Facebook spent 2 billion on this company. Of course they will exert control over them. I'm not sure what Carmack is getting at. Their shareholders will deman
by growupkids 13y ago
Facebook spent 2 billion on this company. Of course they will exert control over them. I'm not sure what Carmack is getting at. Their shareholders will demand it. Facebook is not a charity, it's a business and sooner or later they will have to show a return on this acquisition. It costs money to Dev hardware, If they don't see a return they will pivot this division.
- azernik 13y agoThat's not so much of a problem - in the long run Oculus was going to have to become profitable in some way or another, most likely by selling consumer hardware at a profit. The narratives people get afraid of are of Facebook trying to get profit through the methods of a free website: selling advertising and user data. Given that this is a hardware product, and especially since it's one that will not yet be commoditized when Oculus releases it, I don't see this being a real problem; Apple doesn't need to sell ads or snoop your data to make enormous profits on the iPhone, for example. To extend the smartphone analogy - I think it's more likely that when there's a popular competitor trying to undercut Oculus on price, someone is going to start trying to sell advertising or user data to pad their margins, but I think that's a pressure that exists independently of Facebook ownership.
- SixSigma 13y ago$2bn is about 2% of market cap, just slightly more more than Microsoft owns in FB shares. There's some synergy between a VR product and DirectX with FB footing the bill.