Zuckerberg says he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because building applications is difficult
On a second day on the position of anti -monopoly experiment, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because it was difficult to build new applications and escape questions about whether he was trying to get rid of the competitive threats of his company.
“Building a new application is difficult,” he said when asked why, in an email in 2012, which was presented, he seemed to be determined to buy Instagram. “We may have tried to build dozens of applications on the history of the company, and the majority of them do not go anywhere.”
“We could build an application,” he added. “Whether it succeeded or not, it is a matter of speculation.”
The testimony of Mr. Zuckerberg is essential in the anti -monopoly trial, which is held at the US Provincial Court of Colombia. The CEO spent about three hours on Monday in answering questions from lawyers while trying to raise that Mr. Zuckerberg saw other applications as competitors who need to go out, which led to interrogation such as the cat and mouse that sometimes turned into a dispute.
The case, the Federal Trade Committee against Meta platforms, is a threat to Mr. Zuckerberg, which he co-founded on Facebook in his Dorm Harvard in 2004. FTC James E. Boasberg, who heads the case, asks to find the company Guilty to use “Buy -or -or-Pury” to kill to kill Competition that gets nassent. Meta Instagram was bought in 2012 for one billion dollars and WhatsApp in 2014 for $ 19 billion.
If it succeeds, it is possible that the government will ask the judge to dismantle the definition by selling the two applications.
However, legal experts have warned that FTC was facing a hard rise to win. The government requires the judge to look back more than a decade and prove that dead remained strong by removing competitors through the acquisitions. The organizers agreed to Instagram and WhatsApp deals at the time, which raised questions about the reason, experts said.
The lawsuit against Meta is part of a wider batch by American organizers to curb the power of the largest technology companies. FTC also filed a lawsuit against Amazon, accusing it of protecting a monopoly by pressing the sellers in its wide market and the benefit of its own services.
The Ministry of Justice won the claim of last year, accusing Google of maintaining a monopoly in research, and a trial will be determined next week to determine the treatments for violations. The Ministry of Justice has also filed a law against Google for its dominance in advertising technology. Apple was also a target of a suit by the government, which it accused of making it difficult for iPhone and iPad users to leave its ecosystem.
During the opening data in the Meta experience on Monday, the Federal Trade Committee said that the company’s Instagram and WhatsApp’s purchases have strengthened its power, depriving consumers of other social network options and dismantling competition.
Meta’s lawyers have denied the allegations to open data, while facing that the company is facing a lot of competition from Tiktok and other social media platforms. Lawyers added that the attempt to relax merger after approval before a decade would put a dangerous precedent.
On Tuesday, FTC lawyers pressed Mr. Zuckerberg to explain the internal communications that preceded the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp, both of whom the company had later bought. The notes of Mr. Zuckerberg – dating back to 15 years – detailed concerns about how a social media company, known as Facebook, competes with mobile devices.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mattison referred to email messages from 2012 between Mr. Zuckerberg and his senior executives, who circulated explicit ideas about employees’ performance, potential and previous acquisitions, and the threat of competitors.
In an email to Sherrill Sandberg, the former general manager of Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg told her that he can teach her to play the role of settlers in Katan, a famous tablet game. He continued to criticize some of the laboratory, saying that their late performance was one of the reasons they needed to buy Instagram for a billion dollars.
“One billion dollars is very expensive,” said Mr. Zuckerberg on the platform.
In another email in 2013, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Executive Managers to prevent foreign competitors from advertising on Facebook, including famous Asian correspondence applications such as Kakao and WeChat.
“These companies are trying to build and replace social networks,” he wrote. “Revenue is not important for us compared to any danger.”
Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to witness a total of seven hours. FTC said that Mrs. Sandberg and Kevin Sistrom, co -founder of Instagram, will witness this week.