When Mark Zuckerberg announced in November 2021 that he was renaming his business from Facebook to Meta, he was embracing a virtual universe known as the metaverse.
A month later, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates predicted that most virtual meetings would switch from two-dimensional video grids to "the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars" within two or three years.
Soon after, Microsoft said that it would pay $70 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, a major player in the video game industry, and claimed that the acquisition would "provide building blocks for the metaverse."
However, interest in the metaverse has waned since then. Investors in technology have shifted their focus to emerging developments like artificial intelligence.
Reference: Nytimes.com