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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Meta would love to buy Unity, it has been on Zuckerberg's radar for almost a decade:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/13/facebook-mulled-multi-bill...

But in practice they can't do any acquisitions anymore because of antitrust. Two recent examples:

- Meta purchased a VR fitness app maker called Within, and the FTC is now blocking the sale.

- Meta purchased Giphy years ago, and the UK antitrust authority now wants the sale unwound even though Giphy did no business in the UK.

Multi-billion dollar acquisitions of public companies like Unity are out of the question for Meta because they're subject to a much higher standard than anyone else. Microsoft can probably get away with buying Activision Blizzard while Meta can't buy one insignificant VR game.

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The case of Giphy is really absurd.

This is a real shame. Meta is a company that is trying to do something (beyond Facebook) and I think a Unity acquisition would benefit both of these companies (in their current positions).

Is it? Facebook is trying to "take over" areas not at all related to social media in order to gain more data and could act as a loss-leader in the game developer space just in order to bolster market share in other areas. Preventing that seems to be better for consumers in general.

Isn't that what Microsoft is doing as well?

If Microsoft is allowed to buy Activision Blizzard they would have bought the vast majority of the most popular video game series in the world.

Minecraft, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Elder Scrolls are all top selling game franchises.

The only company that would have more top selling game franchise would be Nintendo and they created all of them for themselves.

Why is Microsoft allowed to buy all of these game studios but Facebook can't buy a single VR studio?

> Isn't that what Microsoft is doing as well?

Yes. And Amazon. And Google. And others.

What the the US government is doing, I have no idea about, but they don't seem to care a lot about preventing huge companies from taking over entire markets, even those not related to their core business. Which already is hurting consumers, but the worst has yet to come.

Has that acquisition been approved? You’re implying that it has, but last I heard of it, it was being investigated by both the FTC and the CMA in the UK.

On the other hand, I'm not looking forward to eventually get a Facebook out of necessity when I need to login into my Unity editor.

Just like Occulus? All Unity accounts will be authorized by a Meta account. Lose the Meta account lose the Unity access.

This is good! Multi-billion-dollar tech companies have been given too much power by governments, partly because they want to capitalize on the spying capabilities provided by their endless cycle of private data slurping, collecting and de-anonymizing, and partly by regulatory capture from an army of lobbyists employed by the tech companies.

Meta is a company that's trying to land grab a new continent (metaphorically). Their motivation to push the Metaverse is their control over it. I don't see why any of us should want to help them do that.

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