Hacker News Reader

Comment by julespitt | Hacker News Reader

This is the first indication, to me at least, that Facebook is going to be pursuing the "Bell Labs" style strategy that Google has been. For example, self-driving cars and robots are great new technologies and industries but have less than obvious connections to Googles core business. Facebook now would seem to be doing the same.

View on HN

That was my thought as well. Just like Microsoft long ago diversified into hardware and services, and Google is doing Calico, self-driving cars, etc. FB sees value in the diversification strategy. I'm doubting they'll be doing Facebook logins or "post to your timeline" stuff with this anytime soon, if ever. Facebook is trying to get more fingers in more pies, which makes perfect sense.

As far as Oculus goes, this probably takes a whole heap of pressure off of them. Now they can act like one of the units of Bell, and just work on the thing, rather than worrying about pleasing investors or turning a profit anytime soon. Assuming FB doesn't do anything crazy, this will only help them and the tech.

Edit: the thing that should be worrying both companies is the potential developer backlash. Not everyone loves FB, as the comments here attest. Perhaps an investment rather than an acquisition would have stirred up less vitriol.

I don't think they're "great new technologies" so much as "pie in the sky" goal-spread diversification that shareholders like to see. There is a cultural aspect of the stock market where a range of goals is seen as more stable than, you know, getting real good at search and ads.

I suspect this in Facebook-OVR. FB might ruin it, a la Yahoo-Flickr, or leave them alone, but Facebook isn't really making headlines these days, and OVR is, so now every OVR story will now have to mention Facebook. It may not turn out this way, but there's no reason why the pairing has to be tightly coupled.

I actually had the opposite impression of stock investors, that they vastly preferred the "just getting better at what you do" than "pie-in-the-sky", but that's just an impression.

Tightly-coupled Facebook-OVR would shock me, definitely.

The problem with that strategy is that Facebook doesn't have the same firm financial foothold that allows Google and Microsoft to burn cash on moonshot projects. Facebook is profitable but ~$7b in revenue leaves less margin for error than Google's ~$59b or Microsoft's ~$77b.

I view this more as eBay buying Skype - no clear synergy (at least yet - I'll keep watching), unlikely to yield any. To me, this is a silly acquisition - if I was a shareholder, I'd be angry that they spent $2b on this. Of course, after you spend $19b or so on Whatsapp, anything smaller suddenly seem reasonable. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com