On March 25th Facebook announced its intention to acquire Oculus VR Inc, a two-year-old company that built its virtual reality goggles on the back of a successful crowdfunding campaign. As is the case with any deal of this size, it had to jump through several regulatory hoops. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced today that it has granted approval to the Facebook Oculus deal, which means that the company can now be absorbed into the all powerful social network.
Oculus isn’t the only billion dollar acquisition that Facebook has recently made. It also acquired WhatsApp, the world’s most popular cross platform messaging service, boasting over half a billion monthly active users. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion and that deal too received U.S. antitrust approval, though with a stern warning of protecting users’ privacy.
So now that the regulatory hurdles are out of the way we can focus on how Oculus will benefit from becoming a part of Facebook, a company that has significantly vast financial resources and talent. Even though the deal drew a lot of criticism from early Oculus backers who contributed funds to the crowdfunding campaign it goes without saying that Oculus would be better off when someone else is writing the cheques.
It really isn’t known right now what the future holds for Oculus and its virtual reality goggles. If you’re intrigued by them, read up on our review.