Comment by incision | Hacker News Reader

Comment by incision | Hacker News Reader

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>"Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless imaginative projects."

Honest question, do you have anything to base this idea that of "many many more times the resources" on? Have any companies been acquired by FB and immediately gone about pushing the envelope in ways that don't strictly line up the existing business of FB?

I think the concern here is entirely justified.

The Rift is a breakthrough product made possible by people who believed enough to back it via Kickstarter. Once delivered the community set about creating a whole range of wild stuff and general made those creations freely available.

Nobody wants to see their creativity hindered by some new corporate developer standards or restricted to distribution through something that sits behind a Facebook login.

Personally, I want the Rift to let me walk on the surface of the sun not allow me the privilege of paying a Facbook/NBA partnership for artificially scarce virtual "courtside" seats to a game.

Instagram has been allowed to go at their own pace since they've been acquired. Parse, also, has essentially gone on it's own and created things at it's own pace. It seems they're having the same attitude with Whatsapp. I assume, especially with Carmack coming over, that FB will be extremely hands-off with the base technology behind the rift.

Facebook is an engineering company; in the way it's run and with what it pushes out to consumers. It's a flat organization essentially run by engineers I mean shit, the CEO built the original product. The Rift under Facebook, I guarantee you, will be the best VR product in the market in five years; which would be much faster than the decade and half it would've taken on their own. Speculation I know, but again with the way Facebook is run, it seems that this acquisition will only expedite the awesomeness-that-is-to-come.

Yes, but Instagram and Parse are services that fall within Facebook's major product area and have teams with related experience to Facebook's daily operations. Oculus is not a service, just a technology; one that has no relation (nor clear route to one) to any Facebook-held product.

> Oculus is not a service, just a technology; one that has no relation (nor clear route to one) to any Facebook-held product.

Exactly. This is what diversification is all about.

At it's core, Facebook is now a public technology company, which means that creating value for its shareholders is it's primary focus.

Buying something that looks like it might be a big deal before it becomes a big deal is doing that. Killing it before it has a chance to become big, especially since it has no "relation to any Facebook-held product" (thus it's not competing) is definitely not in their best interest.

I think most of us really wanted Oculus to be an insanely great technology, not Facebook's "diversification strategy".

exactly. FB has experience with stuffing LOLCat pics in your FB feed. Not innovative tech.

>FB has experience with stuffing LOLCat pics in your FB feed

Seriously? Are you really saying that it's FB's evil plan to stuff cat pictures in your pictures? And not the fualt of those with whom you connect on FB?

It's rather sad how so many people just think of FB as a "website" and not realize the truly innovative efforts they must go through to keep it running as such a massive scale. Not to mention, they built their own servers and pushed initiatives to help the whole industry set up proper infrastructures to achieve massive scale

It's also weird how many don't see the big white elephant in the room: People hate Facebook. For about 3-4 months now, whenever I talk to a non-techie and Facebook comes up _they_ start complaining and telling me how they're trying to get away from it. They even mention other services that are connected with Facebook (Instagram, What's App)!

Is this happening only here in Germany? I was definitely surprised to be back in "the mainstream".

There could be multiple interpretations:

1) People hate Facebook in the same way I hate cheesecake: Facebook does such a good job at hooking me in and spending so much time reading content that it's a delicious evil. I hate how cheesecake makes it so irresistible and would like to eat less of it, but that doesn't make cheesecake bad per se. =)

2) Not everyone does hate Facebook, it's just the Yelp effect: you're more likely to hear about how someone hating on something MUCH MORE than you are likely to hear about someone loving (hell, even just _liking_) a product/service/etc. My buddies and I connect on FB messenger all the time and find it convenient, but we're not going to rave about it on all comment boards, Reddit, etc.

(Sidebar: I find that it's more of the exception, rather than the rule, when the Yelp effect is broken. For example, Evernote made a killing off primarily word of mouth in its early development, and people rave about it everywhere.)

> People hate Facebook

This is complete and utter nonsense.

People would not be using the site if they did.

I haven't had a facebook account in some time, but when I did I hated it. I used it because there was this fear that I'd miss something, I'd be left out of some loop.Once I left, I realized that was nonsense, the people who mattered text, call, or email me.

My dad hates facebook, but he uses it because there's some family and friends on there that make him feel obligated to stick around.

Breaking away is easier than it seems at first, but there are plenty of people who dislike facebook who still use it.

> Are you really saying that it's FB's evil plan to stuff cat pictures in your pictures?

No, FB's needy plan is to act as middleman for stuff people are doing already. If Zuckerberg had his way, checking Facebook would be the first and the last thing everybody on the planet does after waking up and before going to bed. Why and what for they're checking does not even enter the picture, it's irrelevant, mere details. Facebook shares that disease with Google, Apple and Microsoft, and probably others as well.

> Not to mention, they built their own servers and pushed initiatives to help the whole industry set up proper infrastructures to achieve massive scale

AKA disrupting what's good about the web and replacing it with centralized silos. Who needs little shops in inner cities, not to mention public parks and wilderness... let's all just go to the mall, and stay there forever. Again, Facebook didn't start that particular fire, but it certainly loves to help keep it going.

I'm sure what Jack the Ripper did was technically challenging, too. And no, I'm not comparing Facebook with a murderer, at least not first and foremost: I'm saying that something is complicated doesn't automatically make it worthwhile or laudable. What someone is doing, and why they're doing it, matters as well.

They have done some really interesting stuff. BUT! It is still just a website. Of all the over 200 million top level domains, everyone goes nuts of 2 of them: Facebook and Twitter.

They are just websites. Are they the pinnacle of human achievement?

their intentions are held in as high regards as their technical decisions

Define "Not innovative tech"

Did he not just say, "stuffing lolcats into your feed?"

I'm not much a fan of Facebook, but it's only fair to give them credit where credit is due - things like Cassandra, HHVM/Hack, and React are all pretty important technologies, and their datacenter needs mean they've built an internal competency for hardware, too.

I don't think this move makes obvious sense, but Facebook The Company (as opposed to Facebook The Product) is more than just an RSS feed of lolcats.

Well... those are not mutually exclusive, as far as I can tell.

>Diversification

Conglomerates have some of the thinnest margins across many industries.

Jumping into the electronic devices industry with a product that hasn't even hit market yet is a bad gamble, especially since a dedicated electronics manufacturer (Sony) is going to release the same product but with an already dedicated market (Playstation).

It would have been better to wait until OR released, because then early adopters would have demonstrated if it is a viable product.

Fair point. It definitely looks like an emotional purchase in a tough market. They're already getting creamed for it in the stock market [1]

The way things look, this is largely a win for Oculus for finding a big backer, and a risky gamble for facebook.

I think it's good that FB's putting some faith in a great team and product all the same

-- [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-shares-drop-more-t...

Diversification at the corporate level isn't a good idea. Investors typically demand a discount (the conglomerate discount) for diversified corporations because they can easily diversify themselves by holding a variety of securities. Imagine an investor that values social networks highly, but who doesn't care for VR. They'll view this as a distraction from the core business, leading to a discount of the core business and an even greater discount of the VR portion. Diversification makes companies harder to analyze and reduces management focus, and has the tendency to depress both earnings and value.

There are some exceptions around market inefficiency, for example in the case of emerging markets where companies are difficult to manage and finance, but those are becoming less common, not more. I think there may be an argument that the market inefficiency caused by the extra reporting requirements imposed by SOX is causing more companies to go public by way of acquisition instead of IPO, but I haven't really seen clear data on that point.

Publicly held companies often do things that lack vision and do not serve their best interest.

Oh come on. I can think of a hundred applications Facebook could use the technology for and I am not a smart man. Just because Facebook does a few things well doesn't mean they can't... you know... grow and adapt with new technology. Facebook as a whole is probably a lot smarter than you and wouldn't spend 2 billion dollars on something without a "clear" route.

Who couldn't think of a hundred applications you could apply Oculus to any product out there? That's why people get so excited about it!

My point is that its unfair to compare the acquisitions listed above to Oculus simply because it of sticker-price or being so high profile. Oculus is a consumer device, a market that Facebook has tried numerous times and ran screaming from numerous times. Can they do it right? I'm sure they can. Is Oculus the right choice to start? Not my call. But is Oculus a web service? No. Does Oculus, company or product, relate at all to Facebook's product line? Not really. Did Instagram and Parse? Yes. Full stop.

I believe this acquisition was also a play to acquire more engineering talent. Through this acquisition they acquired John Carmack which is a fairly famous engineer amongst the tech community. That component alone strikes me as an incredibly awesome PR move in terms of recruitment.

As far as I'm concerned Facebook is the only competitor to Google at this point. Facebook is just trying to keep pace. I assume they're going to do many awesome things in the near future that aren't necessarily aligned with their current business model in order to keep up that pace.

Carmack left iD because they wouldn't let him work on the sort of stuff he wanted to work on. I see no reason he'd stick around Faceulus as an acquihire; if he's working at Facebook in the future, it's because they're letting Oculus do what it was doing when Facebook bought it.

@ hack_edu

Contracts can be broken. I really doubt John Carmack has to do anything he doesn't want to do. It will be the canary in the coalmine as far as whether I purchase an Oculus HMD when they release.

I do hate this "winner-take-all" situation where a few tech companies in the US acquire every single cutting edge company.

An effective FTC and more widespread use of the Sherman act would be nice in the US.

This would destroy most of the business models of most of the companies on this website.

I fail to see how a social media company buying a headset manufacturer would even hint at anti-trust.

> if he's working at Facebook in the future

... beyond what's required by contract

>Facebook is the only competitor to Google at this point

I wouldn't discount some of the recent moves my Microsoft and its new CEO -- they seem like they're moving fast and trying to become the old MSFT we used to love (or at least I used to.)

Never count Bing out of the fight =)

Look at the market. Don't you see it's counter-move to Google Glass?

No. Even if they both have monitors that move with your head, they are very, very different products. One's a head-attached smartwatch. Another's a presence creator.

No relation? I can clearly see a Virtual Social Network :)

Maybe the only thing common between Instagram and Oculus is the investor (Andreessen) and the acquirer (FB)..oh and that Mark Andreessen was a board member during both the acquisitions!

"Facebook is an engineering company"

Keep telling yourself that. They've released some interesting tech, yes, but an engineering company? No. Neither is google.

They're software companies. Some people don't see writing software as engineering. I write software daily and I wouldn't call myself an engineer. The guys I work with who design electrical circuitry and my dad who worked on engine mountings and vehicle components - I would call them engineers.

Perhaps Google and Facebook should be software companies with an advertising edge?

Facebook is an advertising company with a software edge. They make something like 90% of their money selling media space. The Facebook "product" is, now, nearly indistinguishable from a marketing gimmick. The real product is the users, access to which they sell for their profits.

The same could be said of Google.

> Have any companies been acquired by FB and immediately gone about pushing the envelope in ways that don't strictly line up the existing business of FB?

I'm not sure how many examples are out there, but I continually have to remind myself that Facebook owns Instagram. The product hasn't really suffered, at least for no reasons I would directly associate with them being bought out by FB.

I say this as someone who is also really disappointed that Oculus is now owned by FB. But I'll give it a chance. If they still produce something awesome that isn't tainted by FB crap, I'll use it.

I thought that a big effect of the InstaBook deal was that FB got access to every image on the site, after an opt-out period, to use in advertisements as they please.

I don't work for FB so I don't know the full details of all their acquisitions, but I would look to the success of a company like, say, Parse for what potential could lie here.

> Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

That type of thing is standard wording in an acquisition announcement - it's pretty boilerplate.

While it's possible we'll be pleasantly surprised, the history of small, innovative companies being acquired by much bigger companies does not /generally/ bode well for the smaller companies & their products.

If the Oculus product(s) is successful in any way, it would only be natural for FB to want some kind of hooks/integration, as just another surface area to push their brand/strategy/etc. Just like Google pushed "Plus" into everything regardless of whether it was really a good fit, because the parent corp is the owner/master and the subsidiary (or internal group) has to serve the strategies of its owner. It's not necessarily bad, it's just expected.

Maybe if FB weren't a public company we might expect them to be able to have a bit more of a hands-off approach, but since going public I'd say it's "unlikely".

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