The report and recommendations prepared by the U.S. House Representative sub-committee on antitrust law suggest that Facebook may conflict with the requirement for its Oculus Quest 2 account. The report suggests that Congress should clarify that “conditioning access to a product or service that has the market power for a firm to use a different product or service is antithetical.”
The 9444-page report, prepared by staff to examine competition in the digital markets, looks at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, and includes an appendix listing each company’s major acquisitions and mergers. Among them is the C Culus VR, a 2014 Facebook acquisition that has grown in Facebook reality labs and which will ship the C Culus Quest 2 standalone headset next week for 299. That price may be unmatched by competitors. And kicker? Quest 2 will be Facebook’s first new headset that will require a Facebook account from Go-Go.
“Facebook has also maintained and expanded its dominance through a series of acquisitions of companies viewed as competitive threats, and has excluded competitors from using the platform on a selective basis to avoid competitive pressures,” the report said. “Facebook has also maintained its monopoly through anti-business practices. The company used its data advantage to create new market intelligence, identify new competitive risks, and then acquire, copy, or kill these companies. Once influential, Facebook applied its platform policies by choosing whether it considered it a competitive risk to other companies. In doing so, he took advantage of his own services while weakening other companies. ”
The report only mentions a limited number of virtual realities, with a greater focus on Facebook’s “monopoly power in the market for social networking.” However, the above language applies to the recently declared requirement of Facebook linking the ownership of Oculus Quest 2 to the use of Facebook.
There is a lot to take in the document but we would recommend reading it if you have the time. It provides significant new context for some ongoing conversations with the developers behind SideQuest, Virtual Desktop and Bigscreen. Each of these services has clashed with Facebook’s policies towards VR developers in various ways. We’ve embedded recent discussions with those developers in our virtual studio.
The talk of market dominance in VR is ongoing and we are covering it on an ongoing basis. We have asked Facebook to comment on this topic and will update if we hear back. In the meantime, let us know in the comments below if you find anything interesting in the report!
