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Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

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Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#51

Post by Arcuru »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #36
samwillis wrote: post #17

I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…

> However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control How is it structured at a quick brief high level? Just the common "he owns 50.1% of the company in terms of # shares?"

He owns a different type of share from the common stock which gives him extra voting power. Each share he owns gives him 10 votes, and each share that you can buy gives you 1 vote.

He set it up that way to give him control of the company forever.

Source: https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1061237/how-facebook-si...

> The Facebook shares that you and I, along with big investors like mutual funds, can buy are Class A shares, of which there are roughly 2.4 billion in the market. We get one vote for each share. But Zuckerberg and a select group of others own Class B shares, which afford them 10 votes per share. There are roughly 440 million Class B shares.

>Zuckerberg personally owns nearly 360 million Class B shares, and through agreements with other Class B shareholders, controls the vote of another 32 million. That gives him control of some 392 million Class B Shares, some 90% of the total.

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#53

Post by samwillis »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #36
samwillis wrote: post #17

I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…

> However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control How is it structured at a quick brief high level? Just the common "he owns 50.1% of the company in terms of # shares?"

Multiple classes of share with different voting rights, so while he doesn't own 50.1% of the company he does have overall voting control of the company.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1061237/how-facebook-si...

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#54

Post by Mezzie »

dasil003 wrote: post #24
pessimizer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing about Facebook that anyone needs, that no one else provides. It could go as quickly as AOL.

Interesting reference point because I've heard AOL has continued to be a cash cow for decades: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266568/annual-revenue-of... Advertising revenue is obviously more fragile, but I don't think Facebook cresting the high water mark says all that much about the tail trajectory.

Can confirm; AOL is (sadly) still used. They're our fourth-largest mailbox provider by subscriber numbers.

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#55

Post by [deleted] »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #36
samwillis wrote: post #17

I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…

> However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control How is it structured at a quick brief high level? Just the common "he owns 50.1% of the company in terms of # shares?"

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#56

Post by pier25 »

williamstein wrote: post #9

Vercel/nextjs.org is a nontrivial company whose business fundamentally depends on supporting the React ecosystem.

They seem to be slowly pivoting to Svelte though.

Rich Harris is now working at Vercel. On the last Svelte Summit, Steph Dietz (a Vercel dev rel) literally said "Svelte is the future of web dev".

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#57

Post by BoxOfRain »

turnsout wrote: post #35
parkingrift wrote: post #11

I belligerently hate Meta, but it's pretty wild to speculate that a company with 1.9 billion users will just up and die. A slow death on the order of 10-20 years may happen but I doubt React will still be popular by that time no matter what happens with Meta.

It will look like the death of Yahoo... It lost relevance very quickly, but was able to survive as an irrelevant zombie company for a long, long time.

Reminds me of a white dwarf in a sense, long past its peak but it was once something so enormous it continues to radiate a little for many years due to the residual heat of its prime.

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#58

Post by nostrademons »

ryandvm wrote: post #31
samwillis wrote: post #17

I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…

Fascinating. Looking forward to when Zuck hits his mid 40s and ends up self-immolating Meta in the most glorious mid-life crisis the world has ever seen. [Source: I'm in my 40s and could easily imagine cratering a trillion dollar company I created in a quixotic quest to make the world a better place.]

He might just voluntarily step away for his mid-life crisis, the way Page, Brin, Bezos, Ellison, and Gates have.

I figured a similar dynamic existed when Google did their Class-A/Class-C split. Brin, Page, and Schmidt together hold voting control of the company, so I could envision a future where investors tried to buy up all the Class-A shares and enlist the cooperation of one of the founders to oust the remaining founder. For a long time I held onto my Class-A shares and sold the Class-C ones in case the voting rights premium spiked. But that didn't happen: they've all stepped away from operational roles at the company and in Schmidt's case even resigned from the board. Now the Class-A and Class-C shares largely trade in parallel, and in some cases Class-A even trades below C (which is slightly insane since they are strictly better, but market fluctuations).

Re: Ask HN: If Meta dies will React follow?

#60

Post by myvoiceismypass »

mcast wrote: post #39
samwillis wrote: post #17

I would usually argue that there is no way the Facebook/Meta would die (it almost certainly wont) and so the question is redundant. However because of the way Meta share ownership is structured Zuckerberg has complete control and the board/shareholders cannot eject him. Most (every?) other public company would go through multiple leadership changes over their lifetime as shareholders exert control. Zuckerberg seems t…

>In most companies the board would have required the resignation of the CEO after the historically bad results yesterday That's a strong claim. The stock only dropped 25%, other tech company stocks have dropped as much as 50% in the last few quarters (Snap, DocuSign, etc.) and haven't changed leadership.

Yeah Netflix had a big post-earnings drop, too, and Reed Hastings ain't going anywhere.
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