[jhayward]

I appreciate this response, thanks.

Our disconnect may boil down to this: in my view, WhatsApp's features are, in hindsight, obvious, simple, and easy to implement by any competitor. The advantage (and value) in WA is in the already grown network, the familiar marketplace network effect growing out of that.

Facebook acquired WA for the network of users, not the messaging features. It could easily and more cheaply have fielded an identical app with the same or superior features. It didn't, though, because it wanted to not leave a competitor in the marketplace.

Thus the judgement that it was $19B of mis-allocated capital from a larger viewpoint. We apparently disagree on this point.

On the other hand, working fusion power technology would be hugely consequential for most of the human race, especially in places like Africa that are so energy-needy at this point in their development.

[sangnoir]

I completely agree with your first 2 paragraphs. I am furious with Fb dropping support for basic phones - and this is making WA "yet another messaging app" in pursuit of crowding out Snapchat.

> Thus the judgement that it was $19B of mis-allocated capital from a larger viewpoint. We apparently disagree on this point.

I almost agree, only I believe there's more nuance to this. Fb was never going to invest $19B in fusion power, so to say it was mis-allocated feels wrong. The only reason it spent so much was that WhatsApp was a potential existential threat to Fb. This was the point I was attempting to put across, abeit poorly - that a scrappy company that manages to achieve fusion would be an existential threat to energy companies and would be worth billions for that reason alone.