On the second day in the Landmark antitrust trial position, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because it was difficult to build a new app and avoided questions about whether he was trying to erase a competitive threat to the company.
“Building a new app is difficult,” he said when asked in one email from 2012 that he was presented why it seemed intended to buy Instagram. “We've probably tried to build dozens of apps in the history of the company, but most of them won't go anywhere.”
“We could have built an app,” he added. “It's a matter of guessing whether it was successful or not.”
Zuckerberg's testimony is at the heart of an antitrust trial held in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The CEO spent about three hours on Monday answering questions from his lawyers. Zuckerberg saw it as a rival who needed to take away other apps, and it was sometimes controversial.
The incident, Federal Trade Commission vs. Metaplatform, poses a consequential threat to Zuckerberg's business, co-founded as Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The FTC asks Judge James E. Boasberg, who is proposing the lawsuit, to kill the “buy-back” strategy by using the “Buy-Bury” strategy to win a Nascent Riv. Meta bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and $19 billion in 2014 on WhatsApp.
If successful, the government could ask the judge to disband the meta by selling two apps.
Still, legal experts warn, and the FTC faces difficult climbs to win. The government is asking judges to look back over a decade and prove that Meta has remained strong by canceling out its competitors through acquisitions. The regulator approved the Instagram and WhatsApp deal at the time, raising questions about why, experts said.
The lawsuit against Meta is part of a broader push by US regulators to curb the power of the biggest tech companies. The FTC has also sued Amazon and accused them of protecting their monopoly by squeezing sellers in a vast market and supporting their own services.
The Justice Department accused Google of maintaining its search monopoly last year, and a trial is set up next week to determine a remedy for the violation. DOJ also appealed to Google about the advantages of AD technology. Apple has also been a target for government lawsuits, accusing iPhone and iPad users of making it difficult for them to leave the ecosystem.
In a statement launching at Monday's META trial, the FTC said the company's Instagram and WhatsApp purchases solidified its strength, robbing consumers of other social networking options, robbing competition and robbing competition.
Meta's lawyers denied the allegations they made when opening the statement, rebutting the company's frequent competition with Tiktok and other social media platforms. An attempt to unlock the merger after it was approved 10 years ago would set a dangerous precedent, the lawyer added.
On Tuesday, FTC lawyers pressed Zuckerberg to explain internal communications ahead of purchasing Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg's note – Some of them date back 15 years ago, but details the detailed horrors of how his social media company, known as Facebook, can compete on mobile devices.
On Tuesday, Matheson pointed to an email from 2012 between Zuckerberg and his top executives. There, they exchanged honest thoughts about employee performance, potential and past acquisitions, and the threat of emerging competitors.
In one email to Meta's former chief operating officer, Cheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg told her she could teach her to play the settlers of Catan, a popular board game. He criticized some of the inside li and stated that their late performance was one of the reasons why they should buy Instagram for $1 billion.
“A billion dollars are very expensive,” Zuckerberg said in the stands.
In another 2013 email, Zuckerberg told management to block foreign competitors from ads on Facebook, including popular Asian messaging apps such as Kakao and Wechat.
“These companies are building social networks and trying to replace us,” he writes. “Revenue is not important to us compared to all risks.”
Zuckerberg will testify for a total of seven hours. Instagram co-founders Sandberg and Kevin Systrom will testify this week, the FTC said.
