Facebook accused of squeezing rival startups in virtual reality

San Francisco: Virtual-reality startups are accusing Facebook of using a familiar playbook to muscle out rivals in what could be the digital platform of the future — prompting a new line of scrutiny from US competition enforcers.

Facebook is the world’s biggest virtual-reality hardware maker thanks to its 2014 acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion. Its practices are now drawing the attention of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which is talking to developers about their interactions with the company, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The scrutiny over Facebook’s virtual-reality business reflects broader concerns that the social-media pioneer has grown too powerful. One US lawmaker, during a hearing with Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, attributed the company’s dominance to a simple strategy: Copy, acquire and kill any company that’s a competitive threat.


Software developers and startup founders say the world’s biggest social media company is now using that same playbook to undermine competition in the virtual-reality market.

Facebook’s Oculus acquisition was a bet by Zuckerberg that virtual reality would go beyond gaming to encompass a broad array of experiences and eventually change the way people work and communicate, experts say.

Facebook is pushing hard to establish its presence in virtual reality because it represents a unique opportunity for the social media player to establish itself as the leader in the next state-of-the-art platform to deliver products and services to its users without relying on Alphabet Inc’s Google or Apple Inc.

Faceboook declined to comment about the complaints.