Meta wins antitrust trial as judge denies that it’s a monopoly

In Brief

After 5 years, Meta has emerged victorious from a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suit implicit its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

In an sentiment released Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that the FTC did not beryllium that Meta was violating antitrust instrumentality erstwhile it bought Instagram for $1 cardinal successful 2012, and WhatsApp for $19 cardinal successful 2014.

The FTC did negociate to aboveground grounds showing that Meta — past called Facebook — was acrophobic astir Instagram’s accelerated maturation and the contention it could pose.

“One mode of looking astatine this is that what we’re truly buying is time,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote successful February 2012, per interior Facebook emails that surfaced during the trial. “Even if immoderate caller competitors springs [sic] up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc. present volition springiness america a twelvemonth oregon much to integrate their dynamics earlier anyone tin get adjacent to their standard again.”

But Judge Boasberg was not ruling connected whether Meta had acted arsenic a monopoly backmost then, but rather, if it is presently a monopoly. Boasberg pointed to apps similar TikTok arsenic grounds that Meta has competition.

“The scenery that existed lone 5 years ago, erstwhile the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly,” Boasberg wrote successful his memorandum opinion. “While it erstwhile mightiness person made consciousness to partition apps into abstracted markets of societal networking and societal media, that partition has since breached down.”

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