Meta Ceo Mark Zuckerberg Considered Spinning Off Popular Photo-Sharing App Instagram in 2018 over CONCERNS About The Growing Risk of Antitrust Scrutiny, According to ACCUMENT ShOCUMENT SHOCHING AN TRIAL IN WASHING on tuesday.
The document was shown during Zuckerberg’s Second Day of Testimony at the High-Stakes Trial, In which the US Federal Trade Commission is seeking to unwind Meta’s Acquisitions of prized assets Instagram and Whatsapp.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning instagram out as a separete company,” Zuckerberg said in the memo. At the time, the company was mulling plans to reorganize the social media company and link its apps togeether more closely.
Zuckerberg pushed back in the memo, say consolidation was likely to yield “Strong Business Growth” but caumenting that it also also also could eat eraode the value of flagship app Facebook’s Social Network, with Scant Promise that the company would get to keep its full “family of apps” in the end.
Meta Ultimately Did Not Spin Off Instagram, INTEAD PROCEing with the Plan to Integrate its apps the following year. But the fact that zuckerberg even considered the idea is a stunning sign of how seriously
“As calls to break up the big tech companies, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out instagram and perhaps WhatsApp In the next 5-10 years Anyway, “He Wrote then, Noting The Possibility That The” Next Democratic President “Cold Take Action to Break Up Tech Companies.
“This is one more factor that we should consider since thought if we wantd to keep that those apps togeether we may not be able to remove to,” He said.
The FTC Ultimately Sued Meta in 2020, DURING DONALD Trump’s First Term. Trump’s antitrust enforcers sued Alphabet’s google The same year, accusing it of monopolizing search.
Zuckerberg also downplayed the impact of a spinoff on the company’s fortunes at the time in his memo, Although meta has argued publicly since counted and then attempts to break it.
“Who Most Companies Resist Break UPS, The Corporate History is that Most Companies Actually after performance better after they’ve been split up. Strategy Tax is Usually Greater Than People Think, “He Wrote.
Instagram was better
Zuckerberg’s Testimony Comes as Meta is Defending Itars after the release of other damning statements plucked from facebook’s own documents, like a 2008 email in which he said he said “iter to live Than compe. “
The ftc accuses meta of holding a monopoly on platforms used to share content with friends and family, where its main competitors in the united states are Snap’s Snapchat And Meve, A Tiny Privacy-Focused Social Media App Launched in 2016.
Platforms where users broadcast content to strangers based on shared interests, such as X, Tiktok, YouTube and RedditAre not interchangeable, the ftc argues.
The case is widely seen as a test of the new trump Administration’s Promies to take on big tech companies.
Zuckerberg Testified earlier in the day that meta boght instagram because it had a “better” camera than the one his company was trying to buy at the time.
The Acknowledgement like Monopoly.
Asked by an attorney for the ftc wheether he thought fast-road be destructive to meta, then known as facebook, zuckerberg heed he believed I believed instagram had a batter camera His company was building.
“We We We WEing A Build vs. Buy Analysis” while in the process of building a camera app, zuckerberg said. “I thought that instagram was better at that, so I thought it was better to buy them.”
The company argues that his past interitions are irrelevant because the ftc has defined the social media market inacurely and failed to account for stiff compensation meta has a fateed from future Alphabet’s YouTube and Apple’s Messaging App.
Zuckerberg also Acknowledged that many of the company’s attempts at building its own apps Had Failed.
“Building a new app is hard and many more time than not when we have tried to build a new app, it hasn Bollywood a lot of traction,” Zuckerberg Told the CORT.
“We probally tried building dozens of apps over the history of the company and the Majority of Them given go Anywahere,” He said.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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