Big Tech Antitrust Hearing: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Skewered With Internal Emails

The antitrust panel released numerous screenshots of correspondence from Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives.

Advertisement
By Reuters | Updated: 30 July 2020 10:37 IST
Highlights
  • Zuckerberg stumbled at the hearing on alleged abuse of market power
  • The panel appeared to draw on a rich trove of Facebook company emails
  • An email showed the CFO referring to Facebook's strategy as a 'land grab'

Zuckerberg acknowledged that Instagram and WhatSapp were competitors when Facebook acquired them

Photo Credit: Reuters

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stumbled at a congressional hearing on alleged abuse of market power on Wednesday, as lawmakers confronted the social media titan with damaging internal emails about the company's acquisitions.

The House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel appeared to draw on a rich trove of Facebook company emails, releasing numerous screenshots of correspondence from Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives.

Using the exchanges, lawmakers got Zuckerberg to acknowledge that he saw photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp as competitors when Facebook acquired them.

Advertisement

"The businesses are nascent but...if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us," Zuckerberg wrote in 2012, two months before the Instagram purchase.

Advertisement

In another email, written the same day Facebook announced the acquisition, Zuckerberg conceded that "Instagram was our threat," adding: "one thing about startups though is you can often acquire them."

Representative Joe Neguse, a Democrat, noted that a 2014 email showed Facebook's CFO referring to the company's acquisition strategy as a "land grab."

Advertisement

"We have name for this; it is monopoly," Neguse said.

The committee presented fewer such exchanges to the other executives testifying at the hearing, which also featured Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet-owned Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook.

Advertisement

Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal used an email to grill Zuckerberg on whether Facebook copied competitors like Snapchat for anti-competitive reasons.

"How many competitors did Facebook end up copying?" she asked. "I don't know," Zuckerberg answered, stammering.

She asked if Facebook had ever threatened to clone a competitor's feature while negotiating to buy them. "I would like to just remind you that you are under oath and there are quotes from Facebook's own documents," she told him.

The documents also shed new light on how the social media giant saw the competitive landscape. In a 2012 graphic, Facebook touted the company as "95 percent of all social media in the US." The graphic was titled: "The industry consolidates as it matures."

© Thomson Reuters 2020


Is Redmi Note 9 the perfect successor to Redmi Note 8? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
 

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Advertisement

Related Stories

Popular Mobile Brands
  1. OnePlus 15 Battery Capacity, Charging Speed Teased Days Ahead of Launch
  2. iQOO 15 Launched With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 50-Megapixel Cameras
  3. Realme GT 8, Realme GT 8 Pro With Ricoh GR Optics Launched: See Price
  4. Redmi K90 Pro Max Key Features Revealed Ahead of Launch on October 23
  5. DeepSeek-OCR Could Change How AI Reads Text From Images
  6. BSNL Samman Plan For Senior Citizens Announced at This Price
  7. OnePlus 15 India Launch Teased; Key Features Revealed Ahead of Launch
  8. Vivo X300 Pro, Realme GT 8 Pro, Poco Pad M1 Certified, Could Launch Soon
  9. Sony WH-1000XM6 Review: The Best Just Got Better
  10. iQOO 15 vs iPhone 17 Pro Max: Features, Price and Specifications Compared
  1. WhatsApp Will Soon Crack Down on Spam by Limiting Messages in New Chats: Report
  2. Baai Tujhyapayi OTT Release Date Revealed: Know Everything About Streaming, Plot, Cast, and More
  3. OnePlus 15 Launch in India Teased via Microsite; Company Reveals Key Features Ahead of China Debut
  4. BSNL Samman Plan Announced For New Senior Citizen Users: Price, Benefits
  5. Daksha: The Deadly Conspiracy Is Streaming Now: Know All About This Mohan Babu, Lakshmi Manchu Starrer
  6. Vivo Led Market as Smartphone Shipments in India Rose 3 Percent YoY in Q3 2025: Omdia
  7. DeepSeek-OCR Open-Source AI Model Changes How AI Models Read and Process Plain Text
  8. Vivo X300 Pro, Realme GT 8 Pro and Poco Pad M1 Listed on TDRA Site, Could Launch Soon
  9. Poco F8 Ultra Listing on NBTC Certification Website Hints at Imminent Launch
  10. Diwali Blackout: How the AWS Outage Crippled Major Apps Across the World
Gadgets 360 is available in
Download Our Apps
Available in Hindi
© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2025. All rights reserved.