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The week of one of the trials of the Blockbuster Federal Commission against Meta (Target-1.69%), The Director General of Mark Zuckerberg spent about 10 hours at the stand while the agency questioned him about discovering emails from another era.
This trial just only started. Through IT, FTC will claim that Facebook dealt with “shopping or bury” plains To remove their rivals and gain monopolic power in the social media market. Meanwhile, the target will execute the case that he is responsible for gentle successes – and that even after purchasing Instagram (in 2012) and whatsapp (2014), the target still faces applicable competitions and youtube (Googl+ 1,23%).
It is Zuckerberg’s Kingdom for Social Media in Zuckerberg; If FTC gets your wayThe target will be forced to give up Instagram and WhatsApp, eliminating “to half of your advertisement,” Jasmine Enberg, vice president and the main analyst on the emarketer, said in Quarketer earlier this week.
The research company expects that Instagram represented on your own 50.5% of US ads from the USA this year. Instagram and whatsapp are critical for the constant growth of target as a legacy Social app Facebook loses momentum with young people.
Read on a look at some of the key sets from the first week of trial, including the old e-mail Zuckerberg and the price of the target, reportedly attempted to pay to avoid the trial.
Is today the target monopoly?
“FTC has kicked out the case with the highest witness on his list. Only one witness of the FTC economy, was forwarded to conduct anywhere near stands,” Holland & Hart Antitrust Advantey Paul Swanson, he told e-mail to quartz. “Still, until the FTC faced Mr. Zuckerberg with Red Emails of Facebook to win the competition back in 2010. years, none of this was hit by a key question: does the target hold a monopoly based on Instagram and WhatsApp avizition?”
According to Swanson, the Agency did not receive “critical testimony to show that the target is dominated by the narrow market that excludes other platforms of social media such as Tiktok and LinkedIn (MSFT+ 0.24%). “Swanson added:” Mr. Zuckerberg has defadly described the market in which methane power checks the competition from these companies. “
In one example, Zuckerberg claimed at the stand that the meta’s “growth dramatically slowed down” due to the rising of the tictok. In the second comment, he told He thinks that “people spend more time on YouTube than on Facebook and Instagram combined, certainly more than just one independently.”
Zuckerberg saw this coming in 2018. year
FTC has brought Old emails Sent the target General Manager, and in one message Zuckerberg floated the idea of spinning with Instagram.
He wrote at the time, “As the calls for breaking large technological companies are growing, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to continue on Instagram and maybe whatsapp in the next 5-10 years.” Zuckerberg added“As most companies have resisted the breakdowns, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after being separated.” These comments counteract the target with wide efforts to preserve their “family of applications” under one proverbial roof.
The target looked at whatsapp and instagram as threats
FTC has brought Other Zuckerberg emails As evidence, including a message for 2011. Year that called Instagram A “Large and sustainable competitor on us on mobile phones” and Messages for 2012. year criticized by the teams of Facebook’s head office, Mike Schroepfer. “Messenger doesn’t beat Whatsapp, Instagram grew faster to get from us to have to buy them for a billion dollars,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s not very killing,” he added, by CNN (Wbd+ 0.75%) Report.
Next year, Facebook current chief operating director, Javier Olivan, is worried about Zuckerberg about the growth of whatsappa. Messages presented in court, according to HillShow that Olivan told Zuckerber that he was “hard thinking about it for the past few flags because I was really worried … These guys are a real deal,” he said. Zuckerberg was allegedly Concerned at a time when whatsapp could offer features similar to Facebook and “Start winning the US and other markets.”
Rebecca Allensworth, Antitrustic Legal Associate and Vanderbilt Research, said on Thursday, Thursday, “So far the government has done a good job by using a good job that allowed them to enable them available for a degree.”
“But there is only so much Zuckerberg now he can do to return to what he said then,” Allensworth added. “These are the worst facts of the case from the Metaine perspective, and the government has set some important punches.”
The target is me
Sheryl Sandberg, the target former chief operating director, also took the stand this week. There FTC faced Sandberg about the message she sent in 2011. years, when Google debuted his now unknown Facebook clone. Noticing on Google+ allegedly deserved to journalists that “the most important thing is to admit that the first time we have real competition and consumers have the right choice.” About a year later, Sandberg said he would “block Google” to advertise his Rival on Facebook, in accordance with the court evidence published Bloomberg.
Sandberg claimed that these messages were not about putting their rivals in more unfavorable. “I said the troops brought together,” she opposed.
Zuckerberg’s “crazy idea” that Facebook becomes relevant
Many interesting bits appeared this week. 2022, for example, Zuckerberg floated friends for users “potentially crazy idea” to inhale some life on FacebookAccording to the evidence presented at trial. At that time, Zuckerberg explained that “wiping all graphs and start again” can restart engagement at the service, but there was never a passage.
The target was allegedly trying to sink over a billion dollars to settle
In the invitation to the FERGUSON chairperson, Zuckerberg tried to convince the agency to settle his antitrust case for $ 450 million – and later $ 1 billion, according to the report from Wall Street magazine. Meanwhile, FTC was looking for a settlement worth 30 times, per magazine.
Watch out for professional testimonies
Ahead, “The big thing I am looking for is a publishing of what is the right way to think about the market here and the target alleged monopoly power,” AllenSworth said.
“So far, on that front, we only have a statement from the heads of targets and potential other competitors (like YouTube) about their perceptions of whether the target is facing meaningful social media competition, such as Tiktok and YouTube.”
Alensworth added, “Judges tend to put into expert opinion in antitrust cases in particular when it comes to market definitions and monopoly power.”
2025-04-18 20:39:00
