Facebook to Pay $2B for Oculus

Social networking giant Facebook continues its high priced gambit to own the means to produce technology that will expand user access to their social network. Only last month, they announced a $19 billion purchase of the extremely popular WhatsApp messaging service. Now, they have announced a $2 billion deal to own Oculus VR Inc. Oculus is a maker of virtual reality spectacles or goggles. This is certainly a major gambit by Facebook as Oculus is not even two years old. The company also bears a striking similarity to WhatsApp in that neither is actually generating much income. Despite that, Facebook has laid out $21 billion to purchase both companies.

The chief product made by Oculus is a set a virtual reality goggles for gaming. Facebook’s owner Mark Zuckerberg explained that will greatly expand. He expects that someday people to dawn the goggles to do things such as consult with a physician as if in the doctor’s office, attend a virtual classroom where students and teachers interact as if in a classroom, or enjoy a professional basketball game as if seated courtside. At least one obstacle stands in the way of user acceptance of such goggles and that is the motion sickness such goggles invoke in people. Oculus is fast at work trying to eliminate that side effect from the virtual reality experience.

A virtual reality field expert by the name Brian Blau takes issue with the purchase. He believes that Oculus will not be able to bring to market any product of the sort described by Zuckerberg for at least a few years. He also questions whether Zuckerberg’s vision will ever come to fruition. Blau himself was once involved with a virtual reality tech company. He cites that fact that Zuckerberg is attempting to succeed where all other virtual reality companies have failed: create gear that the mass public adopts.

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Source :
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