Mark Zuckerberg avoids explaining Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions at trial

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the Landmark Antitrust Trial the next day that he bought Instagram and WhatsApp because it was difficult to build new apps and avoid questions about whether he was trying to encounter competitive threats to the company.

“Building new apps is hard,” he said when asked why in a 2012 email submitted. “We may have tried to build dozens of apps in the history of the company, and most people aren't going anywhere.”

“We could have built an application,” he added. “Whether it is successful is a matter of guesswork.”

Mr. Zuckerberg's testimony is at the heart of an antitrust trial, which was held in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The CEO spent about several hours on Monday answering lawyers’ questions as they tried to prove that Mr. Zuckerberg saw other apps as competitors he needed to take out. Mr. Zuckerberg often says that sometimes it causes controversy when inquiring, and he doesn't remember his thought process in certain emails.

The FTC v. Meta Platform case poses a tense threat to Mr. Zuckerberg's business. Meta bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 and Instagr for $19 billion.

If successful, the government may require the judge to break down the element by selling two apps.

Still, legal experts warn that the FTC is facing a tough climb to win. The government asked the judge to look back over a decade and prove that Meta stays strong by acquiring competitors to eliminate them. Experts say regulators approved Instagram and WhatsApp deals at the time, raising questions about the reasons.

The lawsuit against META is part of the broader push for the largest tech companies in the U.S. regulators. The FTC also sued Amazon, accusing it of protecting its monopoly and favoring its services by squeezing sellers in its vast market.

The Justice Department won a lawsuit last year accusing Google of maintaining a monopoly in the search and will proceed next week to determine remedies for the offence. The Justice Department also sued Google for its dominance in advertising technology. Apple is also the target of a government lawsuit that accused it of making it difficult for iPhone and iPad users to leave their ecosystem.

In its opening statement on Monday's META trial, the company's purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp consolidated its power, thus depriving consumers of other social networks of choice and eliminating competition.

Meta's lawyers denied the allegations in the opening speech, opposing the company facing competition from Tiktok and other social media platforms. Attorneys added that attempts to relax the merger after approval of the merger was set a dangerous precedent.

On Tuesday, FTC lawyers urged Mr. Zuckerberg to explain the internal communications before buying Instagram and WhatsApp, which the company later bought. Mr. Zuckerberg’s notes, some of which date back to 15 years, detail concerns about how his social media company (then called Facebook) competes on mobile devices.

On Tuesday, Mr. Mattisson noted that Mr. Zuckerberg and his senior executives sent out an email in 2012 in which they traded candid ideas that dealt with employee performance, potential and past acquisitions, and threats from upstart competitors.

Mr. Zuckerberg told her in an email to Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer of Meta that he could teach her the popular board game Catan's settlers. He went on to criticize some lieutenants, saying their lag performance was one of the reasons they needed to buy Instagram for $1 billion.

“Billion dollars are very expensive,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in the stands.

Zuckerberg told executives in another 2013 email to block foreign competitors’ ads on Facebook, including popular Asian messaging apps such as Kakao and WeChat.

“Those companies are trying to build social networks and replace us,” he wrote. “Revenue is not important to us compared to any risk.”

Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to prove for a total of seven hours. Instagram co-founders Ms. Sandberg and Kevin Systrom will testify this week, the FTC said.