Zuckerberg wrote in a 2018 email that he began to wonder whether “rotating Instagram” will be the only way to achieve important goals as big tech companies grow. He also noted that “there is a non-trivial opportunity” that the Mega might be forced to tear down Instagram, perhaps five to ten years of WhatsApp.
While most companies refuse to break up, he wrote, “company history is that most companies perform better after being split.”
Zuckerberg asked Tuesday that Daniel Matheson, the attorney for Daniel Matheson, who was leading the FTC antitrust case, was thinking about the incidence rate in the company’s history, and Zuckerberg replied: “I’m not sure what I thought of at the time.”
Zuckerberg, the first witness, testified over seven hours in two days during the trial, which could force Meta to break down Instagram and WhatsApp, a tech giant that has grown into a social media powerhouse that has grown to become a social media powerhouse after buying more than a decade ago.
Matheson pointed out in an inquiry to Zuckerberg on Tuesday morning that he called Instagram a “fast-growing, threatening network.” The lawyer also pointed out that Zuckerberg is referring to trying to neutralize competitors by buying a company. But Zuckerberg said while Matheson was able to show the documents he was following in court about Instagram’s growth, he also had many conversations about how excited he was about the company to get a better product in order to make Instagram available. Zuckerberg also said Facebook is building a camera app for sharing on mobile phones, and he thinks Instagram is better in that regard, “so I want to buy them.”
Zuckerberg also opposed Matheson’s argument that the reason for buying the company was a neutralizing threat.
“I think that misunderstands what email is,” Zuckerberg said.
In his skepticism of Zuckerberg, Mattisson repeatedly raised emails — many of which over a decade — written by Zuckerberg and his colleagues before and after the acquisition of Instagram.
While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg often tried to downplay the content and said he wrote it in the early stages of considering the acquisition, and that what he wrote at the time didn’t capture his entire interest in the company.
Matheson also brought up a February 2012 news that Zuckerberg wrote to former Facebook chief financial officers Instagram and Path, a social networking app that has created meaningful networks that could be very disruptive to us. ”
Zuckerberg testified that the news was written against the backdrop of extensive discussions about whether companies should be purchased to accelerate their own development.
Zuckerberg also testified that buying a company, taking it off the market and building its own version is “a reasonable thing.”
Later Tuesday, Yuan lawyer Mark Hansen began inquiries about Zuckerberg. Hansen emphasized in his opening speech on Monday that Meta’s services are free and that the company is far from hosting a monopoly, and that there is actually a lot of competition. He noted that more were expected to be raised in Zuckerberg’s inquiries for more than an hour.
“It’s very competitive,” Zuckerberg said, noting that the cost of using services like Facebook could drive away users, as similar services are widely available elsewhere.
The trial is one of the first big tests for President Donald Trump to challenge big technology by President Donald Trump. The lawsuit was filed against Meta in 2020 during Trump’s first term. It claims the company purchased Instagram and WhatsApp to squeeze competition and build an illegal monopoly in the social media market.
Facebook bought Instagram (a photo sharing app without ads), which was $1 billion in 2012.
Instagram is the first company Facebook bought and has been running as a separate app. Before that, Facebook was known for its smaller “acquisition rate”—a popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company bought a startup as a way to hire its talented workers and then closed the acquired companies. Two years later, it purchased the messaging app WhatsApp for $22 billion.
WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices and appear among the younger generation as Snapchat (such as Snapchat (which it also tried but did not buy) and Tiktok.
However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies such as Tiktok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging services, from being seen as competitors to Instagram and WhatsApp.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg presided over the case. Late last year, he denied Meta’s summary judgment request and ruled that the case must be tried.
