Japan to Invest in Metaverse and NFT Expansion

"WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday filed for an injunction to block Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, from buying a virtual reality company called Within, potentially limiting the company’s push into the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/technology/facebook-meta-name-change.html">so-called metaverse</a> and signaling a shift in how the agency is approaching tech deals.The antitrust lawsuit is the first under <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/technology/lina-khan-ftc.html">Lina Khan</a>, the commission’s chair and a leading <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust-lina-khan-amazon.html">progressive critic of corporate concentration</a>, against one of the tech giants. Ms. Khan has argued that regulators must stop competition and consumer protection violations when it comes to the bleeding edge of technology, including virtual and augmented reality, and not just in areas where the companies have already become behemoths.The F.T.C.’s request for an injunction puts Ms. Khan on a collision course with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/technology/zuckerberg-meta-facebook-earnings.html">Mark Zuckerberg</a>, Meta’s chief executive, who is also named as a defendant in the request. He has poured billions of dollars into building products for virtual and augmented reality, betting that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/technology/personaltech/metaverse-gaming-definition.html">the immersive world of the metaverse</a> is the next technology frontier. The lawsuit could crimp those ambitions.“Meta could have chosen to try to compete with Within on the merits,” the F.T.C. said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="css-yywogo" href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ftc-injunction-request/632c7794cc9ff0a8/full.pdf">in its lawsuit</a>, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. “Instead, it chose to buy” a top company in what the government called a “vitally important” category...."

F.T.C. Sues to Block Meta’s Virtual Reality Deal as It Confronts Big Tech

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