Zuckerberg reveals VR ambitions
Meta CEO makes rare court show
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, was asked a series of questions in federal court on Tuesday about his aspirations for the immersive online world of the metaverse.
Was his company interested in virtual reality? Was it investing in augmented reality? Mr Zuckerberg responded with clipped yes and no answers until a lawyer asked whether Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was “trying to shape the future of technology”.
Mr Zuckerberg hesitated, moved in his seat and replied, “Yes, that’s a fairly broad statement, but yes.”
The exchange came on the seventh day of a hearing in San Jose that has the potential to reshape how tech behemoths buy startups and to stretch the boundaries of antitrust law. The case involves the Federal Trade Commission seeking to block Meta’s $400 million acquisition of Within, a small company that makes a popular virtual reality fitness game. The hearing is set to determine whether the FTC will be granted an injunction to stop the deal.
The FTC’s challenge of the acquisition is highly unusual. While antitrust law has traditionally focused on preventing deals in established markets and mature areas, the FTC is arguing that Meta’s acquisition of Within could snuff out the competition in a nascent market — virtual reality — before it’s even clear if that market will thrive. If the FTC blocks the deal, it could set a precedent for antitrust law.
The stakes are high for both sides. Lina Khan, the FTC chair and prominent critic of Silicon Valley, has pledged to check the tech giants’ power and take them to court more often. She has signalled that she is willing to sustain courtroom losses if they help expand the uses of antitrust law to curtail corporate power.
And Meta, which has been spending billions of dollars to develop virtual reality products and has bought many startups over time, is trying to use the deal for Within and other small companies to become a power in the emerging field of the metaverse.
On Tuesday, Mr Zuckerberg was the star witness. While he has made plenty of public appearances and spoken before Congress, the 38-year-old has rarely testified in court. In one other instance, he testified in 2017 in federal court in a case involving Oculus, a virtual reality company that Facebook bought for more than $2 billion, over accusations from a game publisher that Oculus stole its intellectual property. Facebook lost that case.
At the San Jose federal courthouse, Mr Zuckerberg — wearing a blue suit similar to the colour of Facebook’s logo, a bright blue tie and a mask — took the stand just after 9am. The courtroom was packed with lawyers, journalists and spectators, unlike on Monday when the room was half empty.
During his testimony, an FTC lawyer sought to establish Mr Zuckerberg’s excitement over fitness apps, implying that he wanted to corner the market on virtual-reality fitness apps. Fitness, the lawyer said, would bring more women and older users to the metaverse and would establish Meta’s virtual reality products within the general population.
Mr Zuckerberg pushed back, saying that while he has discussed fitness apps and how they can work well in virtual reality, it wasn’t his focus.
“We talk about games, but also we talk about social being the most important to us,” he said, referring to his company’s roots as a social network. Meta was working on creating apps devoted to productivity and work, he said, as well as “general use cases”.
Meta announced it would buy Within in October 2021. At the time, Mr Zuckerberg had just declared his social networking company was transitioning into a metaverse company.