Meta Platforms Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify in a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) arguing that the company’s proposed acquisition of virtual reality (VR) content maker Within Unlimited should be prohibited.
Within was agreed to be purchased by Facebook for an unknown sum in October 2021.
The FTC identified 18 witnesses it plans to interrogate in a court filing filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, including Zuckerberg, Within CEO Chris Milk, and Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth.
They were also on a list of witnesses submitted by defendants Meta and Within on Friday.
According to the court filing, in addition to defending the Within acquisition, Zuckerberg is scheduled to be questioned on the Facebook-parent company’s strategy for its VR business, as well as the company’s plans to promote third-party developers.
In July, the FTC filed a complaint alleging that Meta’s acquisition of Within would “tend to create a monopoly” in the market for VR-dedicated fitness apps.
According to the regulator, the planned transaction would “significantly diminish competition or seek to create a monopoly” in that market.
Meta has contended in court documents that “the FTC’s conclusory, hypothetical, and conflicting accusations do not convincingly plead any facts to prove that any alleged market for VR Deliberate Fitness apps is ‘oligopolistic’ in terms of either behaviour or structure.”
Meanwhile, Rajiv Aggarwal, Meta India’s Director and Head of Public Policy, has stated “There won’t be a Meta metaverse, an Apple metaverse, or a Google metaverse. It’s as if everyone must come together, participate, and be willing to work together to construct the technologies of the future.”
Aggarwal stated at CyFy 2022 that it is tough to imagine what the metaverse would be like in ten years.
“Although, as previously stated, we may not be in the metaverse today, we can observe the basic technologies that contribute to the metaverse’s construction — the metaverse’s building blocks, certainly.”