[HN Gopher] Meta rebuffs Google's virtual reality tie-up proposal
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Meta rebuffs Google's virtual reality tie-up proposal
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-03-01 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| timmg wrote:
| > But such a partnership could thwart Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's
| plan to "own the next computational platform for AR, VR and mixed
| reality," according to the report.
|
| Obviously, this is important to them/him. And it certainly makes
| sense.
|
| But didn't Zuck's review of the Apple Vision Pro compare it's
| "closed platform" and Meta's is an "open platform"? I never
| understood how that aligned with their needs or their actions.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Open for me, not for thee :)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You can have an open platform that you're still in charge of.
| Open source projects still have leadership of some kind.
|
| And yeah, Meta's Quest platform is _relatively_ open, at least
| compared to Apple. Probably wouldn 't say it's fully open
| though.
| cma wrote:
| Look at Meta's policy on PWAs on the Quest. Far worse than
| Apple, they are setting it up to take 30% of PWAs.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Google here going low ball on Meta and failing spectacularly
| justinclift wrote:
| Who would want to partner with Google on something strategic?
|
| Google is more than likely to terminate the project within 2
| years, which they've demonstrated time and time again.
| blackoil wrote:
| Whatever Meta is. I like Zuckerberg as an Entrepreneur; he makes
| bold gutsy moves and most of them have been right till now. Also,
| his position on culture, dev salaries, contracts etc. seem more
| reasonable than others.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > dev salaries
|
| If this manipulation is true, would you still say he's right?
|
| https://interviewing.io/blog/how-to-negotiate-with-meta
| pquki4 wrote:
| I mean, lots of companies do the same thing, and it's just
| part of the job hunting process. If you can't stand it, you
| don't have to join that company, just find another one. I
| don't like all that stuff but there is nothing worthy of
| picking out Meta.
| fatnoah wrote:
| It is worth noting that a "lowball" from Meta is still
| probably more than a "best offer" from the vast majority of
| other companies.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| This is the nonsense you get for inexperienced and jr devs.
|
| Let's take a look at the pandemic. The government was handing
| out free money. People were stuck at home. Why did big tech
| hire every bit of talent that applied and let them do nothing
| for two years?
|
| The same reason that they over hire now, and have dumb roles
| like "button engineers". The same reason why experienced
| FAANG engineers leave and build bloated systems with more
| servers (and problems) than users.
|
| The strategy is one to abort competition. To soften potential
| competitors with cushy jobs and stupid pay days. TO
| indoctrinate them into a way of building and thinking that
| isnt wholly compatible with startups.
|
| What happens when these processes misfire. You get what's
| app. 30 engineers and 30 servers at the time FB bought them
| (or some stupidly low number, I'm close). Your average post
| FAANG engineer would have 2 dozen people running kafka and
| kuberneties with a multi million dollar cloud spend and have
| given most of the company away to VC's.
|
| Am I suggesting there is a cabal? No, this is the 'natural
| order' and has been going on since Edison. The distinction is
| one of nuance. If you have the stomach for risk it is even
| easier to succeed now than it was in Edisons time (software
| isnt physical goods and hardware, its application not
| creation).
|
| Edit: peter thiel 100k dropout offer is likely an overt
| example of this idea put into action.
| asd88 wrote:
| Meta has been known for years to only negotiate if you have
| competing offers. I guess being the only place with high TC
| hiring right now complicates things but this negotiation
| strategy is not new.
| powerset wrote:
| Not saying it's nice, but that just sounds like tough
| negotiating to me. As opposed to actual illegal salary
| collusion by Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe
| reptiliansim wrote:
| This article seems both inaccurate and unfair. In my job hunt
| over the last 5 months I have been unable to get offers above
| 150k. Meta offered me 270k. Yeah that's below what levels.fyi
| says. So what?
|
| I asked about various amendments to the offer, like a
| starting bonus or compensation for missing January's RSU
| pricing, and my recruiter gave me zero BS, she just said they
| couldn't do it without a competing offer. (And all of my
| competing offers were roughly half of Meta's, so they would
| only undermine my effort)
|
| I spent 1 week in team matching before being given an hiring
| manager interview. He passed on me, and then about 4 days
| later my recruiter said they were now doing hiring "war
| rooms" and another manager had approved to hire me without a
| matching interview. Yes there was a 5 business day ultimatum,
| but again, this is a job offering nearly double the current
| market rate.
|
| I had a great experience with Meta and I would recommend it
| to anyone (just based on the interviewing/recruiting/comp
| aspects, naturally I haven't started working there yet)
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Absolutely the right decision. A very transparent attempt at
| control. He who owns the platform owns the kingdom.
| klabb3 wrote:
| And he who owns the kingdom owns the serfs.
|
| The result of dominance games is stagnation. Innovation happens
| only as a side effect during regime change.
| xnx wrote:
| Would Android XR give Google anymore control over Meta than
| Google has over Microsoft with Edge being based off Chromium?
| geor9e wrote:
| Chromium is open source. Android XR (and ARCore) are closed
| source. So for comparison think more along the lines of Android
| Things, a closed source OS where partners made the Lenovo Smart
| Display 10 for example. Google got bored, or the execs weren't
| impressed at IO'18, and suddenly EOL'd Android Things. Now,
| Lenovo has a ton of stock of a dead-end product line with no
| way for them to update the devices, or the OS. They don't have
| the source. So why would Meta trust Google not to screw them
| too? Compare to, say, Amazon Fire tablets. They're forked from
| AOSP (for FireOS) and Chromium (for Silk) so Amazon will still
| have the complete source code to continue, even if Google stops
| helping the projects. If Android Things got open-sourced so
| Lenovo could continue, perhaps Meta would see Android XR in a
| different light. But they never did. Probably just laziness.
| The IOT fad faded. Google doesn't like to commit any resources
| to things that don't have billion dollar profit potential. They
| just kill, kill, kill and move on. Google has a bad track
| record. Now it's come back to bite them. All future
| partnerships live under the shadow of #KilledByGoogle
| gumby wrote:
| If I were google I'd stay far away because of the antitrust risks
| pquki4 wrote:
| Someone just needs to look at how Google handled their tablet and
| watch strategy to know Google is not a trustworthy partner.
| Android tablets and Wear OS had so much potential, but Google
| squandered their opportunities. Very sad to see Fossil exiting
| the watch devices. And perhaps Samsung is the only big company
| out there that invests so much in Android for non
| smartphone/smart TV devices.
|
| (And let's acknowledge that DeX is completely Samsung's work, and
| they really put a lot of work to make Android tablets usable.)
| Goodroo wrote:
| Funny thing is that the other company was a serious contributor
| to the android ecosystem was Huawei. I can even dare say that
| they were even more serious than Samsung. Google's lack of
| support for non smartphone OS will give Huawei an opening.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I would love the idea that if AR/VR really takes off (which is
| a big if) that we don't have a bunch of silo'd versions of this
| tech that have major fundamental differences (far more than
| just Android vs iOS) due to the nature of the tech.
|
| No one in their right mind should bet on building on a new tech
| like this from Google. What would Meta's options be if Google
| abandons it?
|
| Just not worth the risk.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Incredibly bold assertion that a Meta-backed VR headset won't
| be just as silo'd off as a Google-backed one. Google is 100%
| distrustworthy for sure, but is Meta really _any better at
| all?_
| belval wrote:
| It's a weird world out there these days, but only one of
| them open-sourced their LLMs so maybe?
| nerdjon wrote:
| I think you misunderstood.
|
| I'm not claiming that Meta won't be Silo'd off by making
| their own. But Google is not going to be the one that
| should be trusted to make a platform for multiple devices.
|
| Like it would be great if we had such a platform from a
| company that won't abandon it in a few months.
|
| But instead we are likely just going to have Silo'd
| systems.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It's just not going to happen
|
| The data that comes off of AR devices is just way too
| important and FB and Apple started investing early.
|
| When google hedged after they failed with glass, by investing
| in ML and then putting half ass effort into Tango they gave
| the market to Apple with the Metaio etc... purchases.
|
| I can't stress how badly Magic Leap fucked the AR startup
| ecosystem up.
|
| Meanwhile Zuck was smart enough to realize AR was early and
| built the VR market via Oculus knowing Oculus was just V0 for
| AR.
|
| Meta and Apple won and there's no way for a startup or even
| Google to compete in AR and thus the most important future
| data market
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| I'm torn on this.
|
| First google has been asleep and not contributing much to XR for
| several very important years.
|
| Second meta's version of android (the vr shell is my focus) is an
| awkward pile of jank and fail. It doesn't feel well done in
| practical terms.
|
| I like android and what facebook has done is just... bad android.
|
| That said they've been helping moving forward in positive ways
| with openxr/webxr standards implementations work.
|
| I look forward to a large pile of opensource being contributed to
| the larger XR community by things getting mainlined into android.
|
| We'll see what google can manage these days with their samsung
| headset incoming.
| taeric wrote:
| I feel like I'm being unnecessarily negative, but I really hate
| Android and I would not want it involved with my VR headset. A
| few platforms make good use of it, I think. Peloton, in
| particular, does impress me with how well it uses Android.
| Usually, seeing Android on something is akin to seeing Windows
| CE. I get the idea folks were aiming for, but in practice it
| simply lacks the stability for something that you want to build
| on.
|
| And I don't mean "stability" as in, "doesn't crash." That is nice
| and needed, of course. I more mean it in "doesnt change."
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The Quest already runs Android. It just doesn't run Google Play
| Services and their apps.
| taeric wrote:
| That doesn't shock me and is why I assume I'm being overly
| negative. I'm curious what sort of software is used by
| Playstation Portal or the PSVR2.
|
| And I get that you don't want to be in the market of custom
| software all the way down. I have grown rather distrustful on
| Google's ability to not drop things. Their API discipline is
| not at all pleasant for people that rely on them.
| Goodroo wrote:
| Zuckerberg probably follows every #killedbygoogle social media
| account out there
| anaisbetts wrote:
| It's unfortunate, a partnership with Google that got Play Store
| into Quest headsets would fill in a Huge gap that Quest has right
| now vs the Vision Pro, the 2D app ecosystem. Despite it not being
| the Headline use-case for a XR headset, it's still clearly a use-
| case that people find super useful
| ilaksh wrote:
| A primary feature of the Metaverse as initially envisioned was
| having a platform for diverse virtual shared spaces, experiences
| and software.
|
| WebXR has the potential to be this shared platform. But certain
| features such as immersive navigation that would facilitate this
| may be being deliberately held back or neglected.
|
| https://github.com/immersive-web/navigation/issues/14
| ta20240226 wrote:
| I don't see how this appeals to Meta. It's not like Meta is
| primarily a hardware company that doesn't have expertise in
| software. They are primarily a software company. In addition,
| they have a lot of engineers who are familiar with low-level
| programming, so that is not an issue.
|
| In addition as IBM and Samsung have learned, the OS vendor, not
| the hardware manufacturer, is the one who controls the platform.
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