Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On October 29, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will testify in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). FTC believes that Meta's acquisition of Within Unlimited, a maker of virtual reality (VR) content, should be blocked to prevent a monopoly.

In a court filing filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, FTC listed 18 witnesses planned to be questioned, including Mr Zuckerberg, Within Unlimited chief executive Chris Milk and Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth. They were also on the witness list submitted by the defendants Meta and Within Unlimited on Friday.

In addition to defending the acquisition of Within Unlimited, Zuckerberg is expected to be asked about Meta's VR business strategy and the company's plans to support third-party developers, according to court documents.

Meta agreed to buy Within Unlimited in October 2021 for an unknown amount. FTC filed a lawsuit in July of the same year, arguing that Meta's acquisition of Within Unlimited would "possibly form a monopoly in the VR fitness application market". The agency said the proposed deal would "significantly reduce competition or tend to form a monopoly in the market".

"both behaviourally and organizationally, FTC's conclusions and speculative and contradictory allegations are unconvincing, let alone prove the assumption that any so-called VR fitness app market may form an 'oligopoly'," Meta argued in court filings on Friday.

Under Zuckerberg's leadership, Meta acquired head display maker Oculus VR in 2014 and began to shift its focus to VR. FTC points out in the lawsuit that since then, Meta's VR headline has become the cornerstone of its growth in VR. Driven by Quest VR, Meta's Quest Store has become the leading VR application platform in the United States, with more than 400 applications available for download.

FTC also said that Meta has acquired seven of the most successful VR technology development studios and now has one of the largest VR content catalogs in the world. Meta acquired Beat Games Studios, gaining control of the popular app Beat Saber.

In the lawsuit against Within Unlimited's acquisition, FTC cited an email sent by Zuckerberg to Facebook executives in 2015, saying that his vision for "the next wave of computing" was to control applications and their distribution platforms. Last year, Zuckerberg announced that he would create a meta-universe, which aims to replace the Internet and combine virtual life with real life.

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