In the ongoing antitrust trial against Meta, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he considered spinning out Instagram in 2018, anticipating potential legal pressures regarding big tech breakups. The FTC argues Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp stifled competition. Zuckerberg defended the Instagram purchase as a strategic decision over developing new apps. Historically, corporate breakups may improve company performance, a point he acknowledged despite the usual resistance to separation. The outcome of the trial could potentially lead to Meta divesting these platforms, intensifying discussions about monopolistic practices in the tech industry.
I'm beginning to wonder whether spinning Instagram out is the only structure that will accomplish a number of important goals... there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway.
On the flip side, while most companies resist breakups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they've been split up.
We were doing a build-vs.-buy analysis. I thought that Instagram was better at that [than Facebook's Camera app], so I thought it was better to buy them.
Building a new app is hard... we've probably tried building dozens of apps over the history of the company and only had a few successes.
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