Mark Zuckerberg does not rule out the possibility of spinning off Instagram
into an independent company, especially since he proposed considering this idea a year before the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began an antitrust investigation into the deals to buy Instagram and WhatsApp.
Image source: Cedrik Wesche / Unsplash
The revelation comes as Meta is fighting antitrust claims by challenging a government lawsuit that requires the company to be broken up. As reported by The Verge, Zuckerberg on Tuesday submitted an internal 2018 memo to his company’s executives in the FTC’s ongoing case against Meta in which he stated that “most companies resist being broken up, but business history shows that many do better afterward.”
Let us recall that Meta acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion. However, already in 2018, Zuckerberg predicted possible pressure from the authorities and did not rule out that the company could be forced to give up these assets. “There is a real possibility that everything that we built as a single project may not be ours,” he warned his top managers at the time. He also noted the political risks, especially against the backdrop of the possible coming to power of the Democrats, who, according to him, will definitely require the division of large tech companies.
The FTC is currently accusing Meta of intentionally acquiring competitors to eliminate threats to its dominant position in the social media market. The agency insists that the deals with Instagram and WhatsApp were part of a strategy to prevent competition. Meta, in turn, claims that the charges are “contrary to the facts and the law.”
The legal battle between Meta and the FTC is ongoing, and its outcome could be significant for the entire tech industry, determining the future of the largest platforms and the approach of regulators to issues of digital competition.