NEWSLETTER
Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg Cofundara facebook on his Harvard bedroom in 2004, the social network shot in popularity. Approximately a decade later, the company experienced another explosive growth round after buying its smallest rivals <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/” title=””>instagram and WhatsAppconsolidating its place on social networks.
On Monday, Judge James Boasberg, of the United States District Court for the Columbia district, will begin to consider a case of historical monopoly that involves the company, now called the goal, which depends on a new legal question: did you break the law to stay dominant when acquiring the new companies that were filed in their path?
The case – Federal Trade Commission v. Goal platforms – For the first time, he will try to stretch the theories of the US Antimonopoolio Law. UU. To include what regulators call a strategy of “buying or burying.” Meta broke the law by acquiring nascent competitors to maintain its monopoly on social networks, argues the FTC. Regulators seek to force Meta to uninverting instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta has responded that it faces broad competition in the social networks of Tiktok, Snap, Reddit and LinkedIn, and that regulators approved the acquisitions at that time. The company has not resigned to resolve the case: earlier this month, Zuckerberg was in the White House to try to persuade the Trump administration to avoid a trial.
The result of what is expected to be a trial of several weeks, the first important technological case processed by the Trump administration, could remodel the antitrust panorama of the United States as companies face an intense scrutiny about fuses and acquisitions. A government victory could also have domain effects for Silicon Valley, where new companies have a bank in lucrative acquisitions of larger companies for payments.
Even so, the FTC faces a uphill battle to prove its case, they said legal experts. The legal argument of the government depends on demonstrating that goal would not be so dominant, and it would not have remained dominant, if you had not acquired instagram and WhatsApp, a hypothetical situation that is difficult to prove because many factors have played with the growth of the company.
“This is a critical proof case for whether antimonopoly laws can be used to relax mergers designed to eliminate competition in the foreground,” said Gene Kimmelman, former senior official in the antimony division of the Department of Justice. “A victory for the Government would give consumers more options and opportunities to change on social media platforms without having to be on facebook.”
The demand has bipartisan support and is part of the most aggressive confidence effort of federal regulators from the golden age, with Google, Meta, amazon and Apple that face questions about their power to control the ways in which consumers buy, find information and communicate.
Last year, the Department of Justice won an antimonopoly demand against Google for monopolizing the search on the Internet, and a trial to determine how to remedy that Monopoly is scheduled to begin on April 21. Google is also waiting for a judge's decision in a separate trial about the claims that illegally crushed competition in the advertising technology market.
The Department of Justice has also sued Apple for statements that its very woven device and software system makes it difficult for consumers to leave. And the FTC has sued amazon, accusing him of illegally protecting a monopoly in online retail trade. These cases are expected to come to trial next year.
The technology industry is closely observing the trial goal, one of the first important signals of how aggressively President Trump can stop in the most powerful technological companies. The case originated under his first administration, before a transfer in 2021 to the president of the FTC, Lina Khan, a designated Biden who caught the attention for her search to break the technological monopolies.
Now Andrew Ferguson, the choice of Mr. Trump to lead the agency, the witness has taken. He has warned against the power concentrated in goal power. It is also motivated by a shared republican vision that technological platforms have censored content, particularly conservative voices.
“We do not intend to take our foot from the gas,” Ferguson said <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-03-17/ftc-chair-puts-big-tech-on-notice-video” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>In an interview Last month with Bloomberg.
For the goal, even the idea of Bostar on instagram and WhatsApp is alarming. The company bought instagram for $ 1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $ 19 billion in 2014. At the time of offers, applications were small: instagram had only 30 million users and 13 employees, while WhatsApp had 450 million users and 50 employees. Since then, both have become critics for finishing, with a faster growth and commitment from users than facebook.
The trial is expected to present approximately seven hours of testimony of Mr. Zuckerberg, who will be a star witness, together with the former goal director, Sheryl Sandberg, and the founders of instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta has an army of the most expensive and experienced litigants who discuss their defense, directed by Mark C. Hansen, Kellogg partner, Hansen, Todd, Figel and Frederick. Meta plans to argue that the rapid increase in the Tiktok videos exchange site, in particular, shows healthy competition in the market.
“We are sure that evidence in the trial will show that instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions have been good for competition and consumers,” said Chris Sgro, finish spokesman. “The Commission continues to be wrongly stating that no agreement is really definitive, and companies can be punished for innovating.”
The FTC first sued the finish line in December 2020, together with a similar demand filed by 46 states. The agency's legal argument depends on section 2 of the Law of Sherman Antimonopoolio of 1890, which specifies that it is illegal to maintain a monopoly through the use of anti -competitive practices, in this case, acquiring companies with a premium as a strategy to eliminate them as competitors.
To support its case, the FTC plans to present a 2008 email from Mr. Zuckerberg saying: “It is better to buy than to compete” and a 2012 memorandum that he wrote saying that his motivation to buy instagram was “neutral (Izing) a potential competitor.”
Judge Boasberg, who has been locked in a contentious judicial battle with the Trump administration on the use of a powerful war statute to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants, will decide the case. During a recent tutorial prior to trial, the judge said he had never had a personal facebook or instagram account.
Judge Boasberg rejected the initial case of the FTC in June 2021, saying that the agency needed to provide stronger definitions for the social media market and how Meta had come to monopolize it. He accepted a reflincing version of the case in January 2022, but warned that it was far from being a dump.
In a decision against the finishing motion to dismiss the case last year, Judge Boasberg said the FTC “faces difficult questions about whether their claims can be kept in the melting pot.”
“In fact, their positions sometimes strive for the crispy antitrust precedents of this country to its limits,” he added.
Legal experts say that the case will be difficult to prove because it depends on the determination of executives' intentions more than a decade, during a very different Internet age. The agreements were approved by the regulators at that time, and the years of integration between the applications mean that many of the same internal systems and data share, which makes a breakup challenging.
“He is asking a judge to decide whether Meta tried to kill the competition or was lucky and made a good bet,” said Jennifer Huddleston, the main member of the Cato Institute, a group of experts. “It is assuming a counterfactual that we cannot know.”
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