I'm not sure how many people care. It's like finding out Pepsi owns Aquafina.

"Could I get a water?"

"Is Aquafina OK?"

Sorry, I only drink Dasani

Many don't even realize Facebook is a company.

Why is that funny? Lots of businesses go to great lengths to segment their products and sometimes play them off each other (e.g. Blue Moon pretending to be a craft microbrew despite being produced by MillerCoors).

Not really any different having two jewellery stores opposite each other in a shopping mall giving you the feeling of choice. Only to discover they are owned by the same company.

I saw Shane Robison give a talk about the HP+Compaq merger. [1] He advantage that came from the merger was getting more shelf space in retail stores. Having some influence and/or control of what got displayed in the HP shelfspace and the Compaq shelfspace was considered valuable.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shane-robison

Like when there's a Starbucks and a Seattle's Best on opposing corners.

I mean, it's the same company but a different product (aside from the ads which are the real product). IG has pictures that are cute or funny or cool, FB is a sordid wasteland of misinformation, bickering, and unhappiness. I'm ready for IG to devolve into another misinformation machine any day now since that seems like it is really lucrative for FB, but for now I think IG's simplicity and image focused UI filters a lot of the garbage out.

I also don't know I'm "using microchip" with my Atmel or SMSC - and I really don't care either.

Cool... If you really had an issue with how Microchip handled your personal info - would you be lining up to use Atmel?

If you didn't know Atmel was owned by Microchip and they didn't exactly scream that from the rooftops, you don't think that would be a relevant analogy here?

You and others here probably don’t know half of the companies or brands owned by other companies or brands.