During the Meta antitrust test, a revolted internet era returns to life

The most revealing moment of the American antitrust trial against Meta so far has arrived halfway over 10 hours of testimony of Mark Zuckerberg, director general of the company.

On the stand of witnesses last week, Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook and later renamed his Meta company, was invited by government lawyers to watch a seven -minute video of an interview he gave at a technological conference more than ten years ago. While his fronts came out and his eyes crumpled, the 40-year-old technological billionaire looked at his 28-year-old car describing how the 2012 world had “really underestimated” his business.

At the time, smartphones were a booming computer platform rather than the dominant platform. Facebook was still mainly used on office computers, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s social network was likely to lose users because of a burst of start-ups.

The oldest Mr. Zuckerberg grimacted occasionally as he watched his young me on video discuss some of his competitive concerns, such as Dropbox potential, a file sharing company, to become a rival in photo sharing. With hindsight, he said on the stand, it was “quite ridiculous” to think that Dropbox would compete with Facebook.

It was, in short, a recall of a very different era – an era of social applications, Silicon Valley Hubris and Ivy League entrepreneurs, in which the Meta antitrust trial plunged people, in a courtroom of the American district court for the District of Columbia. In question in the historic case, which could have happened if Mr. Zuckerberg had never concluded two key offers, buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and if he canceled competition with acquisitions.

Sitting in the courtroom of judge James E. Boasberg during the first two weeks of testimony was like entering a time chain. The leaders who have long left Meta – including Sheryl Sandberg, the former second commander of Mr. Zuckerberg, and Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram – are main witnesses. Lawyers have dredged emails that report more than a decade.