Meta reveals $40bn+ metaverse losses and EU launches MS Teams antitrust probe

Meta immerses itself in major losses after XR pivot

Meta’s latest financial results revealed that Mark Zuckerberg has plowed more than $40 billion into his move to pivot Facebook from a social media company into the leader in the metaverse – with this figure expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

The firm’s quarterly results showed that collective losses at Reality Labs – Meta’s immersive reality division – topped $40 billion since Zuck decided to refocus the company almost two years ago.

“This is a very long-term bet,” the Facebook founder told analysts. “I can’t guarantee you that I’m gonna be right about this bet. I do think that this is the direction the world is going in.”

Thales buys security firm Imperva in $3.6bn deal

French aerospace and defense group Thales has agreed a deal to buy cyber security company Imperva from Thoma Bravo for $3.6 billion.

Thoma Bravo itself acquired Imperva for $2.1 billion four years ago, taking the San Mateo-based company private eight years after it had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Founded in 2002, Imperva is a data and application security company with services spanning web application firewalls (WAFs), API security, DDoS protection, account takeover (ATO) protection, data activity monitoring (DAM) and more.

Musk seizes @X handle as Twitter continues with rebrand

Elon Musk has continued the transition of Twitter into “X” by replacing the @twitter account with @X – a handle seized from Gene X Hwang.

Hwang, a photographer from San Francisco, claimed that Twitter had seized his account – which he’d held since 2007 – abruptly, forcing him on to another handle, without any financial compensation.

According to Insider, Twitter – which was rebranded to X over the weekend – did email Hwang, offering him X merchandise and a tour of the company’s HQ.

It comes as Musk faced some difficulty with the rebrand, which was blocked in Indonesia because of the country’s laws on online pornography and gambling.

The EU launches Microsoft Teams bundling investigation

The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its video conferencing platform Teams into its suite of Office applications.

The EC will look into a complaint originally filed by rival Slack in 2020 that accused Microsoft of breaching competition rules by tying or bundling Microsoft Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites.

It is the first antitrust investigation the EU has launched into Microsoft in over 15 years, following two big cases related to Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer bundling.

Should the investigators fine against Microsoft, it could force the media giant to remove automatic installs of Teams from its productivity suite, or other concessions.

Slack’s original complaint alleged that Microsoft had “illegally tied” its Microsoft Teams product to Office and is “force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers”.

Japan picks Microsoft and OpenAI for AI projects

It wasn’t all bad news for Microsoft though as it was revealed it will provide artificial intelligence to the Japanese government after it boosted the processing power of its data centres located within the country, according to the Nikkei newspaper.

Japan’s Digital Agency will make the technology developed by Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI available on a trial basis from the autumn for tasks such as preparing minutes and analysing government statistics, Nikkei said.