[apatters]

It was a smart acquisition for sure, but "ruthless business genius" is a bit of hyperbole imho. FB's market cap was in excess of 200B at the time and they were growing like crazy. 16B on buying what they had failed to build internally and needed as a moat around their core business seems pretty straightforward. Mere mortals like us just get caught up on all the extra zeroes these guys are playing around with.

[el_nahual]

Exactly, spending 10% (!) of your business to buy something that adds no revenue, was built by 20 people, where your team is working on an alternative that is "better", "just around the corner", etc is actually insanely counterintuitive. If it were one percent of the business, sure, play defense, whatever--but 10%, over an abstract notion of "defensibility" is a really hard pill to swallow.

It would be amazing to know what the FB board thought at the time, and if zuck had to push hard for the transaction or not .

[throwawaylinux]

> Exactly, spending 10% (!) of your business to buy something that adds no revenue, was built by 20 people, where your team is working on an alternative that is "better", "just around the corner", etc is actually insanely counterintuitive.

It's not, and Facebook of all companies knows why. What they have is not some stupendous, irreplaceable technology. What they have is users and their relationships. That's how they killed myspace, not with revenue, not with their employee count, and not with their masses of technology, but with their users and the network effect. And that's how they will be killed.

[jagtesh]

Zuck controls the board though! Majority voting rights. Still, have to give it to him. Need guts to make such a call. WA and Instagram, the Crown Jewels of Meta.

Then again, nobody wins all the time (cough oculus cough).

[bredren]

I don’t think Facebook’s social graph / ad-based business model can be connected to a successful hw/sw XR experience.

However, Oculus is way too early to call as a bad bet.

Oculus could be like late model, pre-touchscreen Blackberry.

Where it is proving potential and demand for a new type of connectivity, but unable to leap forward far enough and fast enough to counter an entrance from Apple.

It could pivot its business model and become the most successful XR platform for Android users, consolidating support from Epic, Snap and others.

If Zuck wrote that email in 2013, he knows the headwinds against this direction and I don’t think he’s reached the Bowling Alley scene of There Will Be Blood quite yet.

[anoopelias]

Maybe we're too early to talk about Oculus, there might be a reason why Facebook then is called Meta now.

[shafyy]

Not sure what you allude to with Oculus, but the Oculus Quest is the best selling VR headset ever and is growing like crazy. With their research, they've also pushed the technological boundaries (things like inside out tracking, the new pancake lenses coming with Cambria by the end of this year, passthrough).

I truly believe that VR headsets will become the major computing platform. Not in the next 5 years, and not overnight, but eventually.

[ryandvm]

They sell Quest units at a loss and absolutely nobody is using VR to interact with any of Facebook's properties in a meaningful way. As of right now, it's a total distraction to their core business.

[jagtesh]

Granted, Oculus makes fantastic products that are making VR more accessible. However, as a business, it has been investment heavy[1]. Meta continues to make 10s of billions of dollars worth of investment to build an ecosystem around it.

I don’t think Zuck foresaw the level of investment he’ll need to make before turning profit.

Oculus (and the “Metaverse”) is a 10-20 year play, betting on people changing their habits and using VR as their primary medium of engagement online. They’re trying to build an iPhone/iOS like integrated hardware and marketplace experience, but it remains to be seen if they’ll be profitable as a business.

[1] https://www.androidcentral.com/despite-quest-2-sales-success...

[asadlionpk]

I surely wouldn't want to bet against Zuck, having bought multiple Quest2s, it surely has hit the product-market fit! Unless Apple steals their lunch coming year, Meta is going to be a big hit.

[unilynx]

The quest2's standalone casual gaming capabilities are great - it's easy to setup a party guest for a round of beat saber in a couple of minutes, reminiscent of how accessible the Wii was

if the rumors of Apple's device costing $2000 are correct, they're not going to push the Quest out of that market.

[ryandvm]

I own the Quest 2. Right now it's still a gimmick. It comes out of the case for about 45 minutes a month.

[Handytinge]

There are a significant people who spend tbe majority of their waking hours in VR already, and it's entirely still in early adopter phase.

Lots of people found smartphones to be a gimick early on too.

[rjh29]

What's gimmicky about it?

[iLoveOncall]

You're giving him way too much credit by underestimating grossly what the value of WhatsApp was: around 0.6 billion users.

It's the exact same reason why Microsoft bought Minecraft for 2B. Not because the game was worth anything near that, but because the community was.

[ramraj07]

You don’t need to respect him but continuing to disregard the intelligence of people you’re against (or not ) arbitrarily isn’t a smart move. Zuckerberg has proven beyond doubt that he’s more of a visionary than all other tech bro cEOs he gew along side.

[ajtulloch]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266618