In June, Facebook, which had not yet changed its name to Meta, won a landmark ruling in which the U.S. Federal Court dismissed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. The lawsuit, which began in December 2020 and has undergone more than 20 months of antitrust investigations, is the largest antitrust action against tech giants in the United States since Microsoft's antitrust case in the last century.
Four months after winning the lawsuit, with the joy of victory and the aftermath of the disaster, Facebook officially changed its name to Meta, ready to rely on the meta-universe concept to show its fists. After all, it is not easy to redefine a monopoly in a new and new field.
But Meta's wishful thinking may be falling short.
On November 30, britain's antitrust enforcement agency CMA rejected Meta's acquisition of "meme" company Giphy, saying the deal hindered market competition, the first time the CMA blocked an internet giant's merger deal.
Meanwhile, according to The Information, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an antitrust investigation into Meta's acquisition of VR fitness app Supernatural, as more than $400 million is involved.
#01。
A thorn in the side of regulators
The reason why Meta is "again" under antitrust investigation is because although it has been renamed Meta, its predecessor Facebook has not been targeted by antitrust regulators for more than a day or two.
As early as June 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began an antitrust investigation into Facebook. In September of the same year, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she would lead a multi-state investigation into Facebook along with eight other attorneys general.
Since then, Facebook, along with three other tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google, has been frequently questioned by U.S. regulators.
The reason why Meta is so vigilant by the US regulatory authorities is that social media has high industry barriers, giant enterprises that have completed the preemption of user data for subdivided application layouts, have a competitiveness that other start-ups can not match, and with the development of artificial intelligence and other technologies, such companies that control a large amount of people's data have great hidden dangers in data security.
In addition, Meta maintains and expands its dominance through a large number of acquisitions. In the past decade, Facebook has made more than 100 mergers and acquisitions. In particular, the three acquisitions in 2012-2014, which included Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus one by one, plus its own Facebook and Messenger, Built Meta built a social empire with global impact.
But in recent years, this social empire has gradually weakened. Some disclosure documents show that the number of teen users of Facebook apps in the United States has fallen by 13% since 2019 and is expected to decline by 45% over the next two years. Facebook researchers also found that people born after 2000 are not expected to join the social platform until they turn 24 or 25.
When a behemoth like Meta is facing the situation that the increment of mobile Internet has peaked and the up-and-coming stars such as Snap and TikTok have risen rapidly, continuous mergers and acquisitions and isolation of competitors may be the only way to alleviate anxiety. This is the main reason why Meta was previously seen as a thorn in the side of the US Federal Trade Commission.
#02。
Make a comeback with another vest
One cannot step into the same river twice, but Meta can fall into the same pit twice.
Meta's recent acquisitions of Giphy and Supernatural can be seen as their layout in the metaverse, the former being a VR fitness app and the latter being an emoji platform. These two acquisitions are also not a whim, but a continuation of the merger and acquisition strategy of the Facebook era. Previously, Meta has acquired 5 VR studios in two years:
In November 2019, Meta announced the acquisition of Beat Games, the developer of vr music game Beat Saber.
In February 2020, Meta acquired VR game developer Sanzaru Games, which has produced VR productions for the Oculus VR platform and was the first developer to work with Oculus Studios.
In June 2020, Meta announced the acquisition of U.S. game studios Ready at Dawn to Oculus Studios, which has developed exclusive games such as God of War: Chains of Olympus for Sony.
In May 2021, Meta announced the acquisition of Downpour Interactive to the Oculus Studio Group, which was then hailed by Meta as a leader in the VR industry.
In June 2021, Meta acquired Big Box VR, the producer of the battle royale game POPURE:ONE, which operates in a similar model to Epic Games' Fortnite.
Meta is like a child who constantly tests the bottom line of adults, and after being forgiven once, he begins to seek a wider scale. The above five acquisitions have not attracted the attention of regulatory authorities because of their small size. But the two recent mergers and acquisitions have been a bit of a hit – Giphy's Google, which gifs, and Supernatural, which has acquired up to $400 million, have clearly hit the red line.
There is a Proverb in the West: If a creature looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and calls like a duck, then it is a duck. This is the case with Meta now, although it won the antitrust lawsuit of the US Federal Trade Commission and changed its name to Meta to enter the metacosm, but its mergers and acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions make it still look like a monopoly.
Domestic supervision may open up to it, and once it is targeted by supervision overseas, it is obviously impossible to get out without losing a layer of skin. In October alone, the CMA fined Meta £50.5 million for "serious breaches" of an order to remain separated from Giphy during the investigation.
As for the merger of Supernatural, although the final result has been approved, the FTC's investigation decision shows that Meta's attempt to complete the monopoly strategy of the meta-universe field may have to stop by acquiring a popular VR startup.
#03。
The future or the carnival?
Meta This phenomenon of money-throwing mergers and acquisitions is not an isolated case, at the moment when the mobile Internet dividend will be exhausted, Internet giants at home and abroad seem to be trapped in the strange circle of "no monopoly can not make money". Whether it is the previous domestic giants getting together to enter the community group buying market, or the recent large number of companies to follow the concept of meta-universe, the essence is that making fast money and high profits in the Internet era has become an inertia, and under the expectation of high economic inflation, even the Internet giants seem to be contaminated with FOMO sentiment.
According to Tianyancha data, as of December 19, the total number of trademark applications containing "meta-universe" in the name has exceeded 8534, and a total of 1368 companies have participated in the application. Before September 22, the number of companies applying for related trademarks was only 130; in the past three months, the number of companies applying for related trademarks has increased by nearly 10 times.
Among them, in September this year, Tencent, Xiaohongshu, Ideal Automobile and many other well-known enterprises have applied for trademarks related to the "meta-universe"; in October, NetEase, iQiyi and other companies have also joined the ranks of related trademark applications; in November, Xiaopeng Automobile, Weilai Automobile and other "new car-making forces" have intervened; in December, a number of home appliance companies, including Hisense Group and Sichuan Changhong, have entered the market.
It can be seen that domestic Internet technology companies seem to be particularly partial to the concept of "meta-universe". But the problem is that the meta is prepared, and the layout time of the meta-universe industry chain is ten years, which is studded in the case of absolute advantage. Most domestic companies seem to be more of a brain heat, and all walks of life regard the metacosm as a basket, and put the concept into it.
If the metacosm is to be a monopoly space shaped by the Metas in the future, it is questionable whether it will have legitimacy and sustainability; if the metacosm is only limited to building a virtual world for capital to speculate in, then it is also not necessary to be created.