"Everyone has had some time to digest the FB deal now. I think it is going to be positive, but clearly many disagree. Much of the ranting has been emotional or tribal, but I am interested in reading coherent viewpoints about objective outcomes. What are the hazards? What should be done to guard against them? What are the tests for failure? Blog and I'll read."
Also, this:
"I would expect Facebook to not exert any overt control over Oculus unless Oculus fumbles badly a few times, at which point they SHOULD."
~~~~
My personal take: At the end of the day, it takes more than vision and hard work to drive a dream into existence... it takes investment. It takes capital. This is what the deal brings to the table.
Not only that, as you probably know by now, Michael Abrash has joined the team. I mean, read Michael's blog and note all of the technical challenges and issues with implementing VR. Read Carmack's technical writings on latency issues. There are a lot of problems to solve, on top of building and delivering a solid, commercial-quality hardware and software experience. For example, there is tracking head position and orientation, rendering without shearing and judder, latency issues, etc... everything must be perfect in order to deliver the perfect experience.
Facebook brings the needed investment, plus the scaling infrastructure experience to the table. John has said, "I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale."
I have a lot of confidence in Oculus VR and their extremely capable team. These good people are experienced and they know the technical and business challenges that are ahead. This is why the acquisition occurred.
The passion is still there. I mean, watch this video again [1]. John hasn't changed. After the acquisition, he said, "For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR."
And with Michael coming on board, it's a veritable VR Dream Team with the already talent-heavy team of Palmer Luckey, Tom Forsyth [2], Atman Binstock [3], et al.
As Michael said, "That worry is now gone. Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg
[2] http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/category/tom-forsyth
[3] http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/welcome-atman-binstock-chief-ar...
For a team of new-comers, without both real engineering experience and real business experience, maybe the consequences of the Facebook acquisition could have went the way you imagine, but lots of the Oculus guys are heavyweights and when someone says something that goes against their vision they need to have solid arguments, and even if their arguments will be right, they need to consider that even throwing those arguments at them comes with a huge real risk (of having a team fracture and a bunch of very smart guys leaving the company) and huge real cost (the real productivity decrease that comes from pushing a team in a direction they don't want to go to, and of wasting the big-brains' time in meetings and arguments instead of product development - these kinds of "productivity penalties" ca very well allow a competitor to come up with a better idea before them!).
If they're smart, they will allow him pretty much free reign, and then put some resources behind his projects to help them mature. (think Sergey Brin or Andy Rubin at Google)
At this point, the awesome feature issue isn't even really on the table based on my understanding. Getting the technology to be stable and solving all the issues with it is the main focus. I don't see Facebook getting in the way of that. If that does become an issue, Facebook will have earned the right after having likely spent millions in the three digit range to get it going.
You mention that Facebook brings "scaling infrastructure experience to the table". While FB's datacenter and network expertise might be very helpful for rolling out any hosted or networked VR applications, I would argue that shipping a hardware product requires a radically different culture compared to shipping web applications. Oculus will be, at best, be Facebook's first big risky learning experience in meeting contemporary expectations for consumer electronics logistics. Even Apple is still learning how to do this, and they have the benefit of shipping dozens of products with similar scale and expectations. I think if Oculus had done things on their own, or with a less brand name partner (Flextronics?) customers would have been willing to cut them much more slack regarding schedule and minor roll out woes as long as the core technology/experience delivered.
Another major downside from such tight ties to Facebook will be convincing other large institutions/platforms (Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, Google/Android, Apple, hardware vendors) to cooperate or collaborate in building new services. Oculus might be promised autonomy, but would Palmer still be allowed to unilaterally negotiate with Linden Labs, or IBM, or Apple? Seems unlikely.
EDIT TO ADD: The whole acquisition would make a lot more sense if Oculus had suddenly come under direct legal/patent/IP pressure, which could burn through that $100M a lot faster than, eg, the most significant advances in VR in a generation.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."
I'm sure Facebook will give Carmack, and now Abrash, all the tools they need to build their rockets. Where they will aim them is another story, and will be decided by others.
How much autonomy does Oculus have? Can we trust Oculus with privacy? Will Oculus be an open platform?
Oculus under Facebook might not bring the finished product most of us were looking for, but having a device that's solved the technological challenges of consumer VR is the heavy lifting. And it puts Facebook in the position of being The Name in consumer VR.
Are they going to alienate that right off the bat by building a walled garden, putting heavy content locks on it, watching everything you do? Or will they do the soft touch of making their helmet the easiest (and perhaps only) way to tie your VR into the Facebook network when you wish, get special savings on new software, offer perks to developers that find Facebook-friendly features for their VR software?
I think if they squeeze too hard people will upgrade right out of them into the competition. Which is sure to follow shortly if the hardware is a massive success and the implementation is driving people away. So, cautiously optimistic.
I'm not going to be buying a Facebook device.
Facebook is creepy.
It doesn't matter how cool the technology is or what it can do, more and more people are becoming disturbed at the now common concept of consumer-as-product for Facebook, Google, et al. Even if they seemed open and friendly at first, I personally wouldn't trust that kind of technology in the hands of Google, Microsoft, or Facebook; end of story.
If you think capital is scarce--either in general terms or for a project of this calibre-- I think you are making a false assumption. The world has never seen more capital chasing so few ideas so freely as in the past 10 years. Just something to consider, objectively.
Given that this is a hardware product, and especially since it's one that will not yet be commoditized when Oculus releases it, I don't see this being a real problem; Apple doesn't need to sell ads or snoop your data to make enormous profits on the iPhone, for example.
To extend the smartphone analogy - I think it's more likely that when there's a popular competitor trying to undercut Oculus on price, someone is going to start trying to sell advertising or user data to pad their margins, but I think that's a pressure that exists independently of Facebook ownership.
They know they'll be helping Facebook rape the world's privacy in currently unimaginable ways, but they've got a world-class team doing some serious fucking software engineering, so they don't really care.
Much like for a "quant" on Wall Street, ethical concerns take a back-seat to getting to grapple with lovely, sciency challenges.
Let's take a look:
> I think it is going to be positive, but clearly many disagree.
Positive for you, or positive for the world's sheeple?
> Much of the ranting has been emotional or tribal
Ah, those silly emotional people, group-thinking and being all irrational (unlike Carmack about his technical work). What's there to be emotional about? It's not like there's anything wrong with a police state (like the US or UK) knowing everything about you!
> but I am interested in reading coherent viewpoints about objective outcomes.
He wants us to make a compelling case for how the state knowing absolutely everything about you could possibly be a bad thing. But it has to be objective - you know, exactly like his own view on the matter.
> What are the hazards?
How could Carmack possibly have a clue about the hazards, what with Snowden's revelations and all? It's like, impossible.
> What should be done to guard against them?
How about making sure governments all around the world don't abuse the information they gather on everyone? -Oh wait, you can't.
> What are the tests for failure?
Oh I don't know. Find yourself in a gulag for thinking/saying/doing things the government finds vaguely uncomfortable? --> "Ohhhhhhhh, right. This is a bit of a problem."
He's a CTO and he finds it out like that? There's something I don't understand.
Positive public perception has value, and can (at least in theory) be measured in dollars. In accounting terminology, it's part of what's usually called a company's "goodwill".
If Facebook continues to so negatively effect the public's opinion of every company it acquires, this means that Facebook might get a lot less out of those acquisitions than they might have hoped.
I don't think public perception has evened out enough to be measured, let alone predicted.
Besides, look at Instagram. It was acquired right around the first major Facebook privacy scare (early 2012ish), and it's doing perfectly okay.
Or the other way around: Before the acquisition, I was already on the fence about the Oculus Rift, but now I won't touch one with a ten-foot pole. In which statistic would my change of mind even show up?
My view of Carmack is positive and I think he does want to understand the FaceBook revulsion, but to quote Sinclair
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
He's feverishly working hard on damage control so that the metaverse he's intent on creating isn't either a ghost town or second life.
There is a little more to all of it, but that's the nutshell.
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Hi John, huge fan of all your work.
I think the biggest issue with the FB acquisition is over one variable: control. The Oculus team has, by definition, relinquished control of their platform to FB. This is not a decision to be brushed aside, as it has some very severe consequences.
Let's for example, consider Oculus' partnership with developers. Prior to the FB deal, Oculus had a direct relationship with developers and would work in tandem with them to guarantee the best user experience. Now, there is a massive Facebook middleman, with all of the decision making power, wedged between Oculus and developers. This is the real reason why Notch and many others have abandoned the platform.
Oculus can give us their word, swear an oath, and cross their hearts. But their destiny is no longer in Palmer's, your's or Michael's hands. It's in Mark Zuckerberg's. And if there is, at any point, any sort of disagreement over the smallest issue, there will be no debate because the Oculus team are now nothing more than employees, and will have to put up or shut up when it comes to crucial decisions.
Of course, as long as there are no problems, and everything is rosy then all is well. But the second rough seas are encountered and tough decisions need to be made, I fear that the Oculus team will understand that they've made a serious mistake by relinquishing control of their destiny to Facebook.
If the Oculus team was short on cash, I'm sure there would have been a great many investors willing to pour additional money into the venture at very generous valuations. This is because Oculus was a darling of the industry, with legends such as yourself on board. The developer community knew that you would not compromise on the experience, and because you answered to no one but the Oculus team and your investors, you were free to make the Oculus experience the best it could possibly be.
Personally, I have watched many interviews with yourself describing the challenges of the Oculus and how you are working on overcoming them. I was sold based on your vision, determination, and most importantly, the freedom and control to deliver the best experience possible. I cannot help but feel that the FB deal has put a sword of Damocles over your heads, as the technical leads will always be the first to have to accept defeat when faced with executive meddling on critical decisions.
I would point to Elon Musk, and how he has maintained control of Tesla and SpaceX, not because it was the correct financial decision, but because as a product company he would have been doomed if non-technical executives began vetoing his critical design decisions. Sadly, this latter scenario is the one I believe Oculus has put itself in. I truly hope you can weather these storms as they arise, but history and experience tell me it will be extremely difficult.
Forever a fan,
FD3SA
Your comparison to Elon Musk is kind of odd. Elon Musk's first company sold to a larger company for a giant pile of money. Actually even his second company sold for a giant pile of money. It appears (at least from my perspective) that only after he sold two companies for billions of dollars did he follow the route we see with Tesla & SpaceX of not selling.
Relinquishing control of design decisions for a product company is suicide. Product companies make things whose functions are the selling point. Tesla, SpaceX and Oculus all fall into this category.
One thing we know about FB is that Zuckerberg is willing to look at a longer horizon than most investors. It's quite likely FB is among the least pressuring investors they could have found.
Am I going to have to log in to facebook to use the occulus headset or install the software? Probably.
That's not true about WhatsApp or Instagram. Nothing suggest it'll be the same with Oculus.
The only company to blame for your poor experience is Razer.
G+ and YouTube. Microsoft and Skype. Anything Apple.
Even without a suggestion that this might happen with Facebook and Oculus, it happens all over the industry. There might not be a suggestion of it, but there is definitely a fear of it.
Carmack is correct in saying the Titans will get involved, but I think many people (including the post author) are disappointed that Oculus has forgone becoming a Titan themselves. Committing to such a deep partnership at this stage feels like a big misstep. Imagine where Facebook would be if they had sold out to a company like Apple right before they allowed non-college kids to use the service.
Not sure that I agree this move was necessary at this point in time, but I definitely see his fear of the potential consequences of refusing to strike such a partnership.
> I'm not a "privacy is gone, get over it" sort of person, and I fully support people that want remain unobserved, but that means disengaging from many opportunities. The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me.
> Being data driven is a GOOD thing for most companies to be. Everyone cheers the novel creative insight and bold leadership that leads to some successes, and tut tuts about companies ending up poorly by blindly following data, but cold analysis of the data is incredibly important, and I tend to think the world will be improved with more and better data analysis.
> I have never felt harmed by data mining, and I rather like the recommendations that Amazon gives me on each visit. Educate me. What terrible outcome is expected from this? Be specific.
I find this slightly alarming. Apparently John Carmack was lucky enough not to have been unfairly prosecuted and doesn't have any secrets that could cost him for example his job.
But what happens if one day John Carmack's activities and opinions become illegal? This has happened many times in history and there's no reason to believe it won't happen again.
The scariest thing about data collection is not what is currently happening with it, but what oppressive regimes could do with it. Imagine what if the gestapo or the stasi had all the information at its disposal that Facebook has? Or the NSA even?
And even if there is absolutely nothing incriminating about that data NOW, there's no evidence that will stay the case forever.
I've just lost a massive amount of respect for Carmack. I actually thought he'd have an intelligent opinion on subjects like this.
There is simply nothing of interest to the government that can be learned about you by mining that they can't learn through direct means already deployed.
This is not to say that we should blindly trust data-holders to behave responsibly. We should watch them very closely! The recent kerfuffle about Microsoft reading a blogger's mail is a good example: MS took an action many people felt was wrong, it got widely publicized, and MS decided they weren't going to do it again, and made a policy change to codify that decision. What was a grey area became a bright line that they've vowed not to cross.
The existence of big data is new, and our civilization hasn't figured out how to deal with it yet. I'm confident that we will figure it out, and the good that comes from it will be much greater than the evil.
Not technically wrong, but it's a bad show to introduce that risk. I say this a lot, but - IT ethics is like medical ethics: you're obligated to protect your clients with expertise regarding things they don't understand. Personal information needs to have strong guarantees of segmentation and authority controls. That's not an open question; it used to be called "good system administration."
There's no middle ground on this. Either you're doing your job as an IT professional, or you're exposing users to risk from data-sale, breach exposure, or government overreach.
The services that large-scale IT provides could not exist without gathering the volume of data they do. Google couldn't provide relevant search results with just an index of the web, it also relies on vast amounts of data about user behaviour. The same is true of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
It's non-sensical to talk about risk without talking about the actual scenarios you're worried about. How bad are they? How probable are they? What can we do to reduce the harm and/or likelihood of harm? How much, if at all, will those measures reduce the benefits of the services based on big data? That's the discussion we should be having. Most of the "concern" about big data boils down to an appeal to emotion: "Just think what they could do with all that information!"
The buyout is not good or bad, it just is. Don't get upset people, you couldn't prevent it before and you cannot undo it now.
Vote with your wallet, that's fine. My point is that it's stupid to place your emotional state on something you do not control.
If anything Facebook buying Oculus so early is a good thing for people scared of Facebook's impact on VR. I think there is a long and involved period of VR being refined by hardcore gamers before it tentatively ventures into virtual sports and virtual meetups et al. I just don't see the big gaming companies wanting to do deals with Facebook - they hate Steam for its platform control and its communication overlays - they'll be very wary of a Facebook chat overlay finding its way into to Oculus driver v1.2. And I just don't think Oculus as funded by Facebook is going to be living or dieing with gamers feedback like they would as an independent company. I doubt they are going to sacrifice enough to meet those demands and be reshaped by them.
The best that could happen is that the Zuckster just sends bigger checks to Oculus to expand operations, turning this purchase into more of a round of VC funding than anything else.
The worst case scenario is that it's a purchase like we see in the business world. How many products do better when the company that makes them is bought by IBM or Oracle?
This is the heart of the controversy. Facebook could have easily written an application / demo to integrate with Facebook, but instead they bought the whole company.
What companies might have offered more obvious synergies? Google, Amazon, Apple who have shipped successful hardware?
I myself have recently undergone the acquisition of my company, a private company that was well regarded in the field it was operated, by a large multi-billion mult-national. When I read Carmack's comments I feel pulled in two different directions.
On the one hand, I am old enough to have grown up with Castle Wolfenstein and Doom being formative experiences in my life on the computer, and my life in general. I can still remember downloading to the first Quake shareware, playing the original Team Fortress, and installing Navy Seals Quake long before its creator had moved onto Counter-Strike. And so Carmack is like a hero to me, he really did make an impact on my life growing up.
On the other hand, I see in all of his comments the same sort of sentiment that I saw in all of the upper management and senior members of my firm. They all expressed the exact same sorts of sentiments, that the acquisition would allow our company to reach the next level, giving us greater capital to expand our reach. Of course, now that push has come to shove, actually getting some of that money to spend is proving to be a bit more difficult than they had initially imagined or been promised. It turns out that our parent company was perfectly happy to acquire us for the market position that we help and the money that we could bring in without a substantial capital infusion. I know that the immediate argument will be that facebook will be totally different and will no doubt fund oculus to their heart's content, but I guess it is my cynicism showing when I hear these pronouncements through the same filter I now apply to announcements from our own parent company.
Anyway, as I said, we all view our lives through our own filter, and maybe I am totally swayed in my views. But I can't help but seeing the same sort of naive optimism in Carmack that permeated our organization before it came down to dollars and cents, and cheques had to be signed. And maybe, just like some in our senior management, Carmack is now older and less idealistic, and reflects this is the same way that some in my firm did, in their ability to say one thing publicly, and know something else in their heart, as long as the zeroes added up properly. Something funny happens as you get older, I feel it happening in myself, maybe you just don't feel as ready to go out on your shield. But I got the feeling from at least a few people in our acquisition that they knew how things would go, and were happy to say differently because it would work out better for them.
I don't know where John's head is, and so I can't charitably assume negative things, but then again I don't think assuming the best is any more honest or charitable, especially where facebook is concerned. I hope for the future of VR, but when I read the hopelessly positive and/or naive visions of this acquisition I can't help but asking myself "What do they know that I don't?" How can these people be that optimistic, unless they aren't actually that positive. We'll see how it goes, but I don't begrudge anyone feeling pessimistic at this point, especially given the history of tech acquisitions. We'll see how it goes, but in my heart of hearts, I hope for another Oculus and another Palmer, maybe slightly less focused on the bottom line, bringing the promise of VR to us all.
In my opinion, everything that facebook says is true, today, but could be different tomorrow.
Like a marriage, when you are young and life is good is very different from when you get older, and life gets tough.
Today facebook is incredible rich because they convinced millions of people to buy shares of the company. They promised a good return from their investment.
Being rich they could buy Whassapp, Instagram and respect them like in when you are in love everything is seen with rose colored glasses.
Now, when investors get nervous because facebook profit does not grow enough, their market sinks, the Federal Reserve stops pumping the stock market, or the good people inside starts cashing out their money and leaving.... then suddenly life becomes different.
As a gaming platform, Facebook sucks. Pure and simple. The APIs we need to use to make money change, sometimes on a daily basis. We get no notification when these changes happen. We find out because our games suddenly stop working. Facebook also has a history of trying to screw game developers over in an attempt to get a bigger chunk of cash for themselves. Case in point, they tried to mandate that everybody use Facebook Credits for in game currency. Not only did facebook take 30% off the top (effectively slashing our existing revenues by 30%), but we had to use their API to process transactions. Their buggy, buggy API. That lasted for maybe 6 months? I'm not sure, I got out of it just before the facebook credits thing went down.
Before everybody jumps on me about Facebook not necessarily locking Oculus game devs into their platform, that doesn't matter. Facebook has a history of treating game devs poorly and as a result I have absolutely no desire to deal with the company again.
I hope Facebook doesn't kill Oculus as a product. If it goes to market, my sole criteria for purchase will be "does it require a Facebook login, or a connection to Facebook servers"?
I'm fine with hardware that also has a flagship Facebook Space, or whatever. I can choose to avoid that. That's really what I'm hoping for, as it seems like one of the most benign outcomes.
But if it's a fundamental part of the design is that Facebook has to participate in every Oculus experience, well, no sale.
When you sell your company, you don’t own it any more
http://pando.com/2014/03/26/a-reminder-to-founders-when-you-...
In this environment, Google could have gotten near their IPO value years earlier from an acquiring company. Current crop of titans would have been owned by the previous crop and we would be poorer as a whole.
When acquisition offers outpace revenue to this degree it seems almost impossible for a company to stay independent.
Facebook wants to create free services that gets as much information from their user as possible, and create new features ( or buy concurrents) only when they see them slip away.
It's pretty easy to predict where the two won't match.
And of course, the unnoticeably slow corruption through bureaucracy and politics which inevitably seeps in as acquisitions get merged into the greater fold.
This thread prompted me to write more about this, so I wrote a letter to Carmack (no response yet, though): https://medium.com/p/f8589a747d11
Don't know about you, but that sounds sinister to me...
The only thing that I really don't like about the acquisition is that it is certain to delay the consumer product by some significant time. The shot that Sony fired over their bow (almost into their ship) made them fully understand that their time was up. Their planned time frame wouldn't work in competition with Sony because their pockets weren't deep enough to technologically one-up Sony. To come out with something at best on par but further down the road than Sony would sink them like a stone.
Now those pockets are deep enough and there will be substantial delay as they order the development of new tech and cost reduction engineering to create something truly competitive. This is not speculative, they have stated that they are going to do that but without mention of the time it will take.
This may be good in the long run but I think the run-up to their product has been far, far too long already. What this all means is I want one, I want it now and it just got further away, perhaps much further.
How likely is that to happen?
Free software is the solution. I've never been that interested in Oculus so I'm not aware if the device is flashable or how much control a developer has when writing software for it.
If they treat it as they've treated their "platform", we are likely to have problems.
Which way will it go? Nobody knows...
I think most of us feel that the technology itself needs to be "open" and platform agnostic. We've just observed a major change that places this in question. Concern is justified.
