From the document you linked: "The Commission therefore considers that, albeit relevant, the incorrect or misleading information provided by Facebook did not have an impact on the outcome of the clearance decision."
I'm not opposed to the idea, but I wonder how small the pieces can get before they're not practical to run as a company anymore.
Obviously, things like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp could be competing with their counterparts. As I've never really used Facebook, I don't know what the core app does and how it could be split up.
The press goes from calling out Facebook and zuckerberg as idiots for wildly overpaying for instragram to now saying that it was unfair they bought instagram.
Instagram is less of an issue compared to whatsapp for the reasons you outlined, Facebook mostly took it to where it is, and it also has plenty of competition. TikTok, Twitter, Snap are all large.
Whatsapp and Messenger have significant combined marketshare and it was already much more valuable when they bought it.
and it holds potentially less important data. I know many influencial people including first line politicians in my country that use whatsapp on the daily, while I really can't see any of them sharing confidential information on instagram of all places.
And yes, using a service like that is an extremely bad decision in the first place, but that's where we are right now.
Facebook didn't make the WhatsApp acquisition blind. They had data from their Onavo VPN service showing exactly how popular it was compared to their own Messenger.
I can see that - I use neither and don't have the facebook app on my phone so for me it's irrelevant but I know internationally whatsup just crushes the local telcos.
Honestly, any acquisition by a dominant player in any given market that costs over $100 million should probably be reviewed for antitrust.
We'd do much better preventing monopolies from forming instead of trying to break them up 15 years later, after 99% of the damage was already done, consumers and customers have already suffered for it, and now you also have to deal with the break-up aftermath.
It would maintain a healthier market with many more smaller players. Plus, if these companies have billions and billions of dollars to throw away at buying smaller competitors, surely they have enough money to create their own competitor. Not to mention this would actually create a new competitor in various markets rather than take one away from said market, which is what happens through an acquisition.
Also remember that large companies/monopolies also hurt the jobs market - the fewer players that dominate an economy, the riskier that economy is and you have to bail them out, and also it puts downwards pressure on salaries for workers, because people have fewer options when switching jobs. It's only conglomerates with which you have little margin to negotiate your salary, too.
It's just the price of making a successful bet. Critics were fine with it when they were confident it would fail. They just can't stand being wrong so they're making an effort to make it true.
How does overpaying for an acquisition preclude Facebook from forming a monopoly? If anything, Facebook has more incentives to overpay because of the monopolistic powers it would have.
Near the Washington Post article's end: "Throughout the trial, AT&T lawyers had argued that this "dismemberment" would hurt the nation's telephone network by raising prices to consumers and resulting in a deterioration of the phone system the nation depends on for defense communications and other emergency situations..."
The FTC case against Facebook seems promising to me, but it seems like the AT&T and Microsoft cases were settled before final judgments.
> Near the Washington Post article's end: "Throughout the trial, AT&T lawyers had argued that this "dismemberment" would hurt the nation's telephone network by raising prices to consumers and resulting in a deterioration of the phone system the nation depends on for defense communications and other emergency situations..."
Excuse or not, this technically is true and it is possible things like this happen.
...but! Entry cost for telephony then (=building a whole new, alternative telephone network) is so expensive, that it's unrealistic to build one, except maybe in places with such population density, that the cost of new wiring is offset by the number of new customers in a small area.
Compared to pulling new telephone cables for the whole country, making a new social network is very fast and cheap (apparently, takes 13(?) employees in case of instagram), and allows a slow-start (run the network on one $5 virtual machine, then get another, and another, then have issues with scaling and technical debt, but slowly fix stuff when money pours in), which means that even if facebook fails horribly after the breakup, 'someone new' will fill the gap.
In AT&T's case, the second link ends with the DoJ saying the FCC should've regulated better.
For Facebook, I think we wouldn't want just another giant Facebook2 to pop-up in it's place. It's important that the FTC (or Congress) stress real data portability, privacy regulations and even protocols/standards if needed to tie everything together in a post-Facebook social media. Though I have doubts about just how much of this will be accomplished.
I worked at MS in the early 90's during the time when they wanted to break it up -- I'm convinced that if BillG simply accepted this and approached it in a constructive way, that separate systems and apps companies would have been fantastically good for both shareholders and the software that was produced by MS and others.
30 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 79.4 ms ] threadObviously, things like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp could be competing with their counterparts. As I've never really used Facebook, I don't know what the core app does and how it could be split up.
Do you have any insight there?
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/follo...
Does anyone doubt facebook has pumped some pretty massive bucks into insta? I mean, insta had 13 employees or something?
Whatsapp and Messenger have significant combined marketshare and it was already much more valuable when they bought it.
And yes, using a service like that is an extremely bad decision in the first place, but that's where we are right now.
The risk with what's up is definitely higher. That said, Facebook has an INCREDIBLE acquisition success rate with insta and whatsup.
We'd do much better preventing monopolies from forming instead of trying to break them up 15 years later, after 99% of the damage was already done, consumers and customers have already suffered for it, and now you also have to deal with the break-up aftermath.
It would maintain a healthier market with many more smaller players. Plus, if these companies have billions and billions of dollars to throw away at buying smaller competitors, surely they have enough money to create their own competitor. Not to mention this would actually create a new competitor in various markets rather than take one away from said market, which is what happens through an acquisition.
Also remember that large companies/monopolies also hurt the jobs market - the fewer players that dominate an economy, the riskier that economy is and you have to bail them out, and also it puts downwards pressure on salaries for workers, because people have fewer options when switching jobs. It's only conglomerates with which you have little margin to negotiate your salary, too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/01/09/u...
https://www.justice.gov/atr/att-divestiture-was-it-necessary...
https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
Near the Washington Post article's end: "Throughout the trial, AT&T lawyers had argued that this "dismemberment" would hurt the nation's telephone network by raising prices to consumers and resulting in a deterioration of the phone system the nation depends on for defense communications and other emergency situations..."
The FTC case against Facebook seems promising to me, but it seems like the AT&T and Microsoft cases were settled before final judgments.
Excuse or not, this technically is true and it is possible things like this happen.
...but! Entry cost for telephony then (=building a whole new, alternative telephone network) is so expensive, that it's unrealistic to build one, except maybe in places with such population density, that the cost of new wiring is offset by the number of new customers in a small area.
Compared to pulling new telephone cables for the whole country, making a new social network is very fast and cheap (apparently, takes 13(?) employees in case of instagram), and allows a slow-start (run the network on one $5 virtual machine, then get another, and another, then have issues with scaling and technical debt, but slowly fix stuff when money pours in), which means that even if facebook fails horribly after the breakup, 'someone new' will fill the gap.
For Facebook, I think we wouldn't want just another giant Facebook2 to pop-up in it's place. It's important that the FTC (or Congress) stress real data portability, privacy regulations and even protocols/standards if needed to tie everything together in a post-Facebook social media. Though I have doubts about just how much of this will be accomplished.