Media & Entertainment

Mark Zuckerberg takes thinly veiled shots at Apple for ‘stifling innovation’ via its platform policies

Comment

Image Credits: Facebook (via live stream)

Facebook (aka “Meta”) CEO Mark Zuckerberg today took several thinly veiled shots at Apple and the overall app ecosystem when detailing his plans for the metaverse during today’s keynote speech at the company’s Facebook Connect 2021 event. Specifically, he called out app platforms and their associated fees for “stifling innovation,” while simultaneously justifying Facebook’s plans to keep some of its own fees higher as it further invests in its burgeoning VR ecosystem and its Oculus Quest Store.

His statements follow Apple’s recent app privacy changes that have taken a toll on Facebook’s ads business. With the release of App Tracking Transparency, Apple now allows consumers to stop apps from tracking them across other apps and websites. But this change has dragged down Facebook’s revenue, the company has admitted.

Now, Facebook sees the potential in building out its own app platform with Oculus to create a new stream of revenue — one where it becomes the platform that profits, instead of the developer having to pay the commissions. And one where its business can’t be destroyed at the whims of another company’s shift in strategy.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that it’s time to make this change, saying that he’s learned in recent years that “building products isn’t enough.”

“We also need to help build ecosystems so that millions of people can have a stake in the future and can be rewarded for their work and benefit as the tide rises — not just as consumers, but as creators and developers,” he said. “This period has also been humbling, because as big of a company as we are, we’ve also learned what it is like to build for other platforms. And living under their rules has profoundly shaped my views on the tech industry,” Zuckerberg continued.

“Most of all, I’ve come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet economy,” he added.

These comments seem directly pointed at Apple and Google, on whose platforms Facebook’s core products largely reside. Facebook has to pay fees on in-app purchases to the app stores — including when users subscribe to creators, buy badges or tip streamers directly, for example. While both Apple and Google have been bringing their commissions down for smaller businesses, media providers and subscription apps, the standard split is still 70/30 (developer/platform).

App Store rules have also prevented Facebook from building out other products where it could have increased revenues — as with its newer gaming service.

The company slammed Apple’s policies last year as it launched Facebook Gaming on iOS without games, for example. Apple doesn’t allow apps that contain other apps or games, as that would cut into its own ability to generate revenues from third-party developers. So instead of being able to play mini-games as on Android, Facebook Gaming iOS users could only watch streams.

However, the real concern for Facebook’s future is one where its ad revenues are threatened by platform policy changes out of its control.

Those revenues over the years have allowed Facebook to invest in other sectors, in addition to keeping its apps free, Zuckerberg noted.

“We offer our creator and commerce tools either at cost or with modest fees to enable as much creation and commerce as possible. And it’s worked. Billions of people love our products,” he touted. “We have hundreds of millions of businesses on our platform.”

The company now plans to take the same approach to build its metaverse ecosystem — by either subsidizing devices or selling them at cost, to make them more broadly available to consumers, Zuckerberg said. And unlike with Apple’s App Store, Facebook says it plans to support sideloading and linking to PCs to provide consumers and developers with choice, instead of locking them into its platform. (Of course, many developers will choose to launch on the Quest Store for discovery’s sake, which is why Facebook knows it can make this promise.)

He also said that Facebook would keep developer and creator service fees low, when possible. However, Zuckerberg — sketching out the company’s next business model — warned that won’t always be the case. Given the size of its investment in this new ecosystem, some fees would remain higher, he said.

“To keep investing in this future, we’ll need to keep some fees higher for some period to make sure that we don’t lose too much money on this program overall,” Zuckerberg explained. “After all, while a growing number of developers are already profitable, we expect to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale. Our hope, though, is that if we all work at it that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”

In other words, Facebook’s plan is to become more like Apple by tapping into developer revenues at scale and making its own rules.

More TechCrunch

Call Arc can help answer immediate and small questions, according to the company. 

Arc Search’s new Call Arc feature lets you ask questions by ‘making a phone call’

After multiple delays, Apple and the Paris area transportation authority rolled out support for Paris transit passes in Apple Wallet. It means that people can now use their iPhone or…

Paris transit passes now available in iPhone’s Wallet app

Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, will be recycling production scrap for batteries going into General Motors electric vehicles.  The company announced Thursday…

Redwood Materials is partnering with Ultium Cells to recycle GM’s EV battery scrap

A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. The company’s new app, which launched…

Auggie’s new app helps parents find community and shop

Andrej Safundzic, Alan Flores Lopez and Leo Mehr met in a class at Stanford focusing on ethics, public policy and technological change. Safundzic — speaking to TechCrunch — says that…

Lumos helps companies manage their employees’ identities — and access

Remark trains AI models on human product experts to create personas that can answer questions with the same style of their human counterparts.

Remark puts thousands of human product experts into AI form

ZeroPoint claims to have solved compression problems with hyper-fast, low-level memory compression that requires no real changes to the rest of the computing system.

ZeroPoint’s nanosecond-scale memory compression could tame power-hungry AI infrastructure

In 2021, Roi Ravhon, Asaf Liveanu and Yizhar Gilboa came together to found Finout, an enterprise-focused toolset to help manage and optimize cloud costs. (We covered the company’s launch out…

Finout lands cash to grow its cloud spend management platform

On the heels of raising $102 million earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding to make acquisitions to strengthen its security…

Bugcrowd, the crowdsourced white-hat hacker platform, acquires Informer to ramp up its security chops

Google is preparing to build what will be the first subsea fibre optic cable connecting the continents of Africa and Australia. The news comes as the major cloud hyperscalers battle…

Google to build first subsea fibre optic cable connecting Africa with Australia

The Kia EV3 — the new all-electric compact SUV revealed Thursday — illustrates a growing appetite among global automakers to bring generative AI into their vehicles.  The automaker said the…

The new Kia EV3 will have an AI assistant with ChatGPT DNA

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, isn’t working properly right now. At first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it seems search results are loading…

Bing’s API is down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too

If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. The so-called ‘autonomous navigation’ market — where ships steer themselves guided by AI, resulting in fuel and time savings…

Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell…

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long lost mycoprotein to your plate

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

17 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

Featured Article

Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Several hotel check-in computers are running a remote access app, which is leaking screenshots of guest information to the internet.

20 hours ago
Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Gavet has had a rocky tenure at Techstars and her leadership was the subject of much controversy.

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out

The struggle isn’t universal, however.

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…

22 hours ago
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

HoundDog actually looks at the code a developer is writing, using both traditional pattern matching and large language models to find potential issues.

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking

The changes are designed to enhance the consumer experience of using Google Pay and make it a more competitive option against other payment methods.

Google Pay will now display card perks, BNPL options and more

Few figures in the tech industry have earned the storied reputation of Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For over 40 years, he has been at the center…

Vinod Khosla is coming to Disrupt to discuss how AI might change the future