Zuckerberg weighed spinning off Instagram in 2018 amid antitrust pressure, email shows
On the second day of his testimony, Meta CEO was shown an email, in which he weighed the option of spinning off Instagram.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed spinning off Instagram in 2018 amid growing antitrust concerns against Facebook, according to an internal email revealed Tuesday in a Washington, D.C. courtroom.
On the second day of his testimony in Meta’s antitrust trial with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Zuckerberg was shown an email, in which he considered the option of spinning off Instagram, the app his company bought for $1 billion in 2012.
“And I’m beginning to wonder whether spinning Instagram out is the only structure that will accomplish a number of important goals,” the 40-year-old had written in the email from May 2018.
“As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, 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. This is one more factor we should consider,” he further stated.