If they bought both Instagram and Snapchat it would have been neutralizing competition. Instagram acquisition was just a business staying relevant after a youth market grew up and soured on them while the next younger ones wanted something else cooler designed for 100% around mobile.
I believe intention and behaviour matters much more to antitrust than simply continuing to be a dominant market leader by smartly staying on top of what the public wants. Google search doing horizontal integration into Android and Chrome to cut off competition's market entry points at lower levels is far more plausible antitrust narrative IMO.
They tried to buy Snapchat multiple times and the guy refused after seeing how much Facebook valued Instagram and thought he could get more than a billion.
Yes it was between the two if I remember correctly. If they bought both it'd be crossing into near total monopoly, at least before Tiktok took off. But they are pretty far from that now IMO. At least in terms of competition from tons of other services. It's possible they did other shady things outside of that.
Right I looked it up. They bought Instagram in 2012 and tried to buy Snapchat a year later.
Since it didn't happen it's pretty moot to the discussion. M&As with massive market consolidation like that get challenged all the time in courts so it's hard to say what would have happened then.
FTC investigated the Instagram purchase in 2012 and chose not to interfere.
So failed acquisition doesn't make buying Instagram inherently an anticompetitive move, just maybe can be spun as their strategy at the time, but a decade later the market still has plenty of players so it will be a tough case to make. Although even a failed case gives the government leverage over Meta with threats of future ones so they might not care.
Since the discussion is entirely about their motivation in buying Instagram, it’s certainly not moot at all. They wanted to have a monopoly and remove the competition. That was the motivation.
The FTC investigation specifically had a condition that they would reevaluate the acquisition in coming years. This was widely expected to be done, and everyone knew about it at the time of the acquisition.
I believe intention and behaviour matters much more to antitrust than simply continuing to be a dominant market leader by smartly staying on top of what the public wants. Google search doing horizontal integration into Android and Chrome to cut off competition's market entry points at lower levels is far more plausible antitrust narrative IMO.