FTC looks to block Meta acquisition of VR firm in court

Federal regulators opened their campaign to block Facebook parent Meta’s acquisition of a virtual-reality company Thursday in a San Jose, California, courtroom.

In a landmark legal challenge to a Big Tech merger, the Federal Trade Commission has sued to prevent Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited and its fitness app Supernatural, asserting it would hurt competition and violate antitrust laws.

The FTC is arguing that, were it not for the Within acquisition, Meta would have developed its own dedicated VR fitness up, entering this nascent market with its own product as a new competitor — and Within would have remained in independent player in the market.

Regulators cite a 2015 email from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Facebook executives saying that his vision for “the next wave of computing” — namely virtual and augmented reality — was control of apps as well as the platform on which those apps are distributed. The email said that a key part of this strategy is for the company to be “completely ubiquitous in killer apps,” which are apps that prove the value of the technology.

Meta Platforms Inc. has been unsuccessful in its bid to have the case dismissed after arguing that the U.S. failed to prove that the virtual reality market is concentrated with high barriers to entry.