google apple fb  Sept. 28, 2022 6:00 AM PDT

Is Meta Platforms’ $70 cardinal stake astatine the metaverse shaping up arsenic the biggest wealth pit ever successful tech?

Perhaps. There are fewer precedents—if any—for a corp spending arsenic heavy arsenic Facebook’s proprietor is to summation a caller tech platform, an immersive planetary Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisages arsenic “the adjacent chapter” of the net. And by Zuckerberg’s precise ain telling, it tin beryllium different 8 years oregon greater—the “quit of the decade”—earlier than Meta starts to look a payoff. That begs the query of whether oregon not Meta volition ever get capable of a spell backmost to warrant the funding.

We determined to instrumentality a stab astatine comparing what Meta is spending connected its large caller wager to what different corporations person invested connected caller platforms. It’s striking that successful the beyond, groups similar Apple and Google precocious groundbreaking caller technology—such arsenic the iPhone and Android cellular software—while spending a fragment of what Meta is making an investment. And for some Apple and Google, those investments were staggering successes. Both agencies persevered to enactment wealth into their caller technologies, nevertheless a full batch of that concern got present aft release, erstwhile the payoff changed into clearer.