Mark Zuckerberg’s own emails, some of which were over 10 years old, revealed that he had antitrust concerns long before the FTC carries his file against Meta.
During 10 hours of testimony, a lawyer from the Federal Trade Commission toasted the meta-PDG by his former emails.
Zuckerberg’s messages reveal almost noeud concerns about the emerging competitors, blunt descriptions of some of the most pivotal offers of Facebook.
“Although we believe that our current trajectory will lead to a strong growth in companies over the next 5 years, I fear that it will also undermine our global network, that our business brand erodes, will impose an increasingly important strategy tax on all our work, then over time, we can face the antitrust regulations which forced us to transform other applications in any case,” 2018 email for Facebook leaders in mind.
Daniel Matheson, FTC’s principal lawyer, underlined another part of Zuckerberg’s premonitory warning concerning the future of his business.
“While most companies resist ruptures, the history of the company is that most companies work better after their separation,” wrote Zuckerberg. “Synergies are generally less than people think and the strategy tax is generally greater than people think.”
When Matheson asked the billionaire to explain his reflection, Zuckerberg seemed disconcerted.
“I don’t know exactly what I had in mind,” said Zuckerberg in response to Matheson’s question on which story he had in mind in 2018.
The trial, which started on Monday and which should last up to eight weeks, experienced a high -level start, with Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg as the first accusations.
Matheson and his lawyers turned several times to a 2012 message that Zuckerberg sent Sandberg in which he summed up the need to acquire Instagram. In the same thread, he offered to teach Sandberg how to play Catan settlers.
“Messenger does not beat Whatsapp,” wrote Zuckberg. “Instagram grew so much faster than we had to buy them for $ 1 billion and groups and places, although smaller efforts, have made a little progress. It is not exactly killing it.”
Facebook acquired WhatsApp about two years later for $ 19 billion.
If the FTC wins the case, the government could ask Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Legal experts claim that the government faces a high bar by proving that the meta “cemented” its monopoly with its acquisitions from the two companies since the FTC already obtained these mergers years ago.
(In October 2012, Facebook officially renamed Meta.)
An audience sketch shows Mark Zuckerberg (right) during his interrogation by an FTC lawyer during the Meta antitrust trial. Reuters / Dana Verkouteren
Mark Zuckerberg’s many concerns
Meta sought to minimize Zuckerberg’s messages. Mark Hansen, the company’s principal lawyer, said that the Facebook co -founder should be worried – he came with work.
“Was it a constant joke in Meta that you worry and that the sky fell?” Hansen asked Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg replied that if it’s a joke, “it’s probably behind my back”, but stressed that concern is a cornerstone of Silicon Valley.
Hansen also said that if the government had many examples of Zuckerberg expressing the fear of the rise of Instagram and Whatsapp, there were also concerns on missing social networks like Path. In an email, Zuckerberg expressed his concern that Dropbox may possibly become a competitor – who too has never materialized.
“I am a little more worried about the path,” wrote Zuckerberg in 2012 for senior executives in a wire called “Aquarium”, the ironic name for one of the real conference rooms of the social network at its headquarters in Menlo Park.
“Of all the new social startups, they are the only ones to go directly to the heart of what we are trying to do around the identity and sharing of friends.”
Prosecutors showed a 2012 email sent by Mark Zuckerberg about his surrounding concerns, a social networking application that was growing. FTC / Business Insider
Zuckerberg’s old concerns are more relevant when they concern Instagram and Whatsapp. The FTC maintains that Facebook has engulfed companies because it feared that with a large user base, one or the other could possibly rotate to become more like Facebook.
“If Instagram continues to kick the ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then in the coming years, they could easily add elements of their service that copy what we are doing now, and if they have an increasing number of photos of people, this is a real problem for us,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2011 email.
Sometimes it’s not about being loved.
As for WhatsApp, the government has shown several messages where Zuckerberg expressed concern about the messaging application that increased popularity outside the United States – and one where it seemed indifyly in its management.
“I found it quite impressive, but disappointing (or perhaps positive for us) unnecessary,” Zuckerberg wrote in 2012 to colleagues after meeting Jan Koum, the co-founder of Whatsapp.
The meta-PDG seemed surprised when Hansen questioned Zuckerberg on the email. Zuckerberg said that the interest of his message was that he had learned that Koum did not want to rotate or monetize WhatsApp in a way that really disturbed Facebook.
On the other hand, the FTC has shown several messages in which Zuckerberg expressed its frustration in the face of Facebook’s efforts to develop a competing camera application when Instagram has skyrocketed in popularity.
“What’s going on with our photo team?” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2011 message which was partially expurred when he was presented to the court. “Between (expurgated) the departure and (expurgated) which was verified / a bad manager as well as (expurgated) who is also verified and (expurgated) not wanting to work with this team because he thinks that this team is zero. It seems that we have a really critical situation to repair here.”
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