Definition platforms A company faces a Historical monopoly experience experience Starting on Monday, the technology giant can force Instagram and WhatsApp pieces, which are startups that they bought more than a decade ago that have grown since then to social media.

The trial of the anti -monopoly, which is looming on the horizon, will be the first major test of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Committee’s ability to challenge large technology. The lawsuit was filed against Meta – then it is called Facebook – in 2020, during the first period of Trump. It claims that the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp for competing squash and creating illegal monopoly in the social media market.

FTC argues that META maintained a monopoly by following the strategy of CEO of Mark Zuckerberg, “expressed in 2008:” It is better to buy from competition. “

FTC has submitted policies designed to make it difficult for young competitors to enter the market and “neutralize competitive threats,” says FTC in its complaint, just as the world turned its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.

“He is unable to maintain its monopoly by somewhat competition,” says FTC.

Buy Facebook Instagram-then apply the sharing of amazing images without ads and small follow-ups-in 2012. The price of the joyful purchase of $ 1 billion was at that time, although the value of the deal decreased to 750 million dollars after the Facebook price decreased after its first year offer in May 2012.

Instagram was the first company to purchase on Facebook and continued to run it as a separate application. Until then, Facebook is famous for the younger “Have-Heres”-a kind of famous silicon valley deal in which the company buys a startup as a way to employ its talented workers, then closes the acquired company. Two years later, I did it again with the WhatsApp application, which is thatIt was purchased for $ 22 billion.

WhatsApp and Instagram Facebook helped transfer his business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and stay common among young generations as competitors like Snapchat (This is what he also tried, but he failed to buy) and Tiktok appeared. However, FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, with the exception of companies like Tiktok, YouTube Apple correspondence service is considered competitors to Instagram and WhatsApp.

“FTC has already a difficult task, whether it is looking at 10 years, five years ago or today, from trying to determine the market that we are talking about in a sufficient way so that it can show that Meta has a lot of strength in this market,” said Paul Swanson, a lawyer for the combat law, Netherlands and Hart. “I think this challenge has become more difficult with the passage of years and we see more and more potential competitors in social media spaces.”

At the same time, Meta says FTC’s suit “challenges reality”.

“Evidence in the trial will show what every 17 -year -old child knows in the world: Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp compete with Chinese, YouTube, YouTube, xIMessage and many others. After more than 10 years have passed since the FTC review and our acquisitions, the committee’s procedure in this case sends a message that there is no final deal at all. “The American organizers should support innovation, instead of seeking to dismantle a great American company and more Chinese advantages on critical issues such as artificial intelligence,” the company said in a statement.

In a file last week, Meta also confirmed that FTC “must prove that Meta has a monopolistic force in its relevant market now, not at some point in the past.” This, experts say, can also prove a challenge because more competitors have appeared in the social media field in the years when the company has bought WhatsApp and Instagram.

The fate of Meta will be determined by the American boycott judge James Boasberg, who in late last year denied Meta to obtain a brief judgment and decided that the case should go to the trial.

Swanson said that Boasberg “seems to be skeptical” in defining the narrow market in FTC in its provisions so far. He added that the judge also said that he was a “real question”, which means that he is open to hear what FTC and his experts say to determine this narrow market.

Although FTC may face an arduous battle in proving its cause, the risks are high for Meta, whose advertising works can be reduced in half if it is forced to leave Instagram.

“Instagram is now the largest money maker in the United States, which is its most profitable market, where the application represents 50.5 % of the company’s advertising revenues in 2025. Instagram also captured the stagnation on Facebook on the user front, especially among young people, for a long time,” said Emarkine Enberg. “The trial also comes at a time when Meta is trying to return OG Facebook in an attempt to attract users on Gen Z and Younger Use while joining social media. Using social media is more fragmented today than in 2012 when Facebook got Instagram, and it is no longer Facebook as the children of the wonderful college hang.

But Meta is not the only technological company in the scenes of federal monopoly organizations, Google and Amazon Facing their own situations. The Google case treatment stage is scheduled to start on April 21. A federal judge announced that the research giantIllegal monopolyLast August.

“There is a big topic here is that we apply the laws of the nineteenth century to the markets of the twenty-first century. I think it is an open question whether the developments of the ruling on the anti-monopoly law can keep up with the markets with their change-these liquid and dynamic technological markets in particular.” “This will be a case that speaks directly to that.”

This story was originally shown on Fortune.com

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2025-04-14 11:55:00