I wouldn't count them off that easily. Valve is making their own autonomous headset, should be out next year. It will be more expensive, yes. But it will be faster and it will be full blown Linux PC with access to whole library of PC games. Might be very competitive(still will lag in units sold though, but mostly due to supply constraints). Any you shouldn't forget that Sony is still on the market(autonomous PSVR is not out of the question) and Apple is making their own headset.
I doubt Facebook's name change is driven by the last few weeks of bad PR. The relevant model seems Google's change to Alphabet, which wasn't driven at all by an attempt to flee the negative associations with their previous name.
I agree Zuckerberg had probably been thinking about it, particularly since Snow Crash is assigned reading for some of his employees.
It seems, though, that the timeline was moved up dramatically to both distract from other Facebook-related news, and to escape from the toxic branding that is Facebook at this point.
Switching to a name which is already a common english word with many uses, seems like an attempt to make future criticism more confusing, as well.
