Washington (AWP/AFP) – The Meta trial, accused of having bought Instagram and WhatsApp to suffocate potential competitors, opened in Washington Monday despite the efforts of its boss Mark Zuckerberg to avoid it.
The billionaire was called to the bar first. He must try to show that the two services have only become essential applications thanks to investments in his group.
The case arrived in court five years after the complaint under the first Trump government. If the social networks giant loses, it could be forced to separate from its two flagship platforms.
The Consumer Protection Agency, the FTC, will have to prove that Meta, then Facebook, abused its dominant position during the acquisition of Instagram in 2012, for a billion dollars, and WhatsApp in 2014, for 19 billion.
Meta “decided that the competition was too tough and that it would be easier to buy your rivals rather than being in competition with them,” defended the representative of authority, Daniel Matheson, in a very stocked courtroom in his introductory.
It was for Meta “to eliminate immediate threats,” he said.
“Acquisitions” committed with the desire “to grow and improve bought companies have never been illegal,” replied Meta’s lawyer, Mark Hansen, describing the two operations as “successes in terms of consumers”.
Category question
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the Californian group and third world fortune, was immediately called upon to testify.
The case will be played in particular on the definition of the market, on which the two parties oppose.
For the American authority, Meta’s services fall under “personal social networks”, which allow you to stay in touch with family and friends; The other large platforms such as the very popular Tiktok and YouTube do not belong to the same category.
A prospect that the Menlo Park firm (Silicon Valley) rejects.
“The fact that these services are different by certain aspects of Meta’s applications only proves that these close competitors innovate with tools and features to gain minutes of attention from users,” argues the defense.
Meta, for her part, also develops innovations in response to those he considers his competitors, still pleads his representative.
“Really scary”
The complaint against Meta is one of the five major antitrust actions launched in recent years by the United States government in the technology sector.
Google was found guilty of abuse of dominant position on the online research market last August, while Apple and Amazon are also the subject of prosecution.
During the eight weeks of trial, the FTC will seek to demonstrate that the Meta monopoly results in degraded use for users, forced to tolerate too many advertisements and steep changes.
From the opening of the hearing on Monday morning, the agency began to highlight emails from Mark Zuckerberg.
“The potential impact of Instagram is really scary and that is why we should consider paying a lot of money,” wrote the Facebook founder before the acquisition of the photo sharing application.
Instagram now has 2 billion users around the world.
Meta lawyers say that substantial investments have transformed the two start-ups into superproductions. They will also emphasize that the FTC had initially approved the two transactions and that it should not be allowed to go back.
If it won its antitrust action against Google last summer, the FTC also underwent several setbacks before the courts. It could not prevent the acquisition of Within by Meta and that of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
Judge James Boasberg, who will decide the case of Meta, has already warned that the FTC “will face difficult questions about the ability of his accusations to hold the road to the Court”.
AFP/Rp
