FacebookFacebook has been discontinued.

Company announced its new corporate nameOn Thursday, Meta was the signal that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, plans to take the company past traditional social media platforms and create what he thinks will be the next generation of personal computing through virtual worlds viewed via computerized glasses.

This is a very risky decision for a company worth approximately $900 billion. Facebook is growing its digital ads business and plans to now invest billions each year in a sci fi concept called a metaverse.

Facebook’s pivot echoes the what Google did back in 2015 when it reorganized into AlphabetA group of companies that will use Google’s profits to invest in futuristic projects. The Other Bets are also known as self-driving vehicles and curing death.

Alphabet has shown a fair picture of what Facebook could experience over the next six years as it makes science fiction science fact. Nevertheless, Facebook’s focus is stronger than Alphabet.

Let’s see how these two strategies compare:

Larry Page was right to say that Zuckerberg wouldn’t vanish like Larry Page.. Larry Page, the cofounder and CEO of Google, reorganized the company into Alphabet. He kept his job but gave the Google portion to Sundar Pichai. Page vanished from the public eye and was never seen again. Day-to-day operations were managed by Ruth Porat and Pichai. Page eventually resigned as CEO, and Pichai assumed full control of Alphabet.

On Thursday, Zuckerberg stated that he is not hiding like Page. In the coming years, Meta’s new direction will be led by Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg will still be the CEO of Meta, so he’ll have to take responsibility for any future controversy.

These companies use the profits from hugely successful ads to fund future technology investments. Although Facebook and Google may be innovative, the core of their business is quite boring: digital advertising. However, both companies have made their digital ads businesses money-printing machines. The money has been reinvested in projects and technologies that will protect future disruptions.

Alphabet has not seen this payoff so far.Google already has reabsorbed Alphabet’s other Bets like Nest smart home division. Project Loon (a division of Alphabet which attempted to provide internet access from high-altitude balloons) was one example. This is also a huge money drain. Alphabet’s Other Bets segment saw a loss of $1.29B in the third quarter.

This should signal to Meta to that even ambitious ideas can take more money and time than an publicly traded company is willing to invest. This helps explain how Alphabet companies, such as Waymo and Verily, have raised a lot from investors other than Alphabet.

Which amount of money will Zuckerberg be permitted to spend in order to create the metaverseZuckerberg stated this week that Meta would spend approximately $10 billion to hire staff and develop technologies for the metaverse. It’s clear, however that it is still far away from the technology necessary to create the metaverse. Zuckerberg claimed it will be 10 years but the future is still unknown.

Meta can’t afford to spend the time and money it takes to build its metaverse. It is possible that Facebook investors will get impatient and wait for the metaverse to be built.