Wednesdayâs showdown between US Congress and the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon was a spectacle alright. The link above has a summary of the key moments, but the bit I thought was particularly interesting was the publication of internal emails from 2012, when Facebook started
discussing buying Instagram.
At one point in the emails, Mark Zuckerberg saysâŚ
âOne way of looking at this is that what weâre really buying is time. Even if some new competitors springs up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products wonât get much traction since weâll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.â
While itâs fun and nerdy to be able to look into the inner workings of Facebook through emails like these, Congress was far more interested in how it proves Facebook did look at acquisitions as a way of killing competition and staying relevant.
Given this was a session focused on antitrust issues, emails like that are a potential red flag pointing straight towards tighter regulation of Facebookâs activities. Buying competitors isnât necessarily against antitrust rules, but the emails arenât a good look when politicians already think Facebook has too much power.
Whatâs more, while Wednesdayâs hearing was quite scattergun, covering everything from competition law to alleged bias against conservatives, itâs clear that lawmakers from both sides of US politics believe itâs time to rein in the behaviour of big tech companies.
But Zuck and his fellow CEOs can probably relax just a little. Itâs unlikely anything much will get done ahead of the presidential election in November, so it could be a year or more before we see any solid action to strip them of any of their current powers.
