The first week of the Meta antitrust trial brought new revelations about how the company formerly known as Facebook approached the competitive threat posed by Instagram in the early 2010s.
The U.S. government is accusing Meta of violating competition laws by acquiring companies like Instagram and WhatsApp that threatened the Facebook monopoly. If lawyers for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are successful, the government could force Meta to break up its business by selling off Instagram and WhatsApp.
As part of the trial, the FTC shared compelling evidence to demonstrate that Facebook was very much aware of the risk Instagram created for its business as the photo-sharing app grew in popularity. In documents containing Facebook’s internal emails, Facebook execs fret over Instagram’s growth and discuss how much to pay for the app, if Facebook were to acquire it.
The company execs also discuss other strategies for limiting Instagram’s growth, including copying its functionality and releasing an app of their own, or buying the app and then no longer adding new features to it while working on its own products.
Facebook’s strategy to either buy or bury its competition is on display in these conversations, according to the government’s arguments. In addition to showing how the company was thinking about its competition at the time, the messages are indicative of the cutthroat strategies that have allowed Meta to become the social networking behemoth it is today.
Some of the highlights from these messages are below.
Mark Zuckerberg and others worry about Instagram’s rapid growth
“Instagram seems like it’s growing quickly. In 4 months they’re up to 2m users and 30k daily photo uploads. That’s a lot. We need to track this closely. Also, apparently Dropbox’s next big push is going to be in photo sharing.” — Mark Zuckerberg, February 2011
“If Instagram continues to kick ass on mob …