Meta offered $450 million to settle its antitrust trial — about $29.5 billion less than the FTC wanted
But Zuckerberg’s business could lose a lot more if it’s forced to sell Instagram or WhatsApp.
The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Meta is now heading into its third day, as the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively, are hauled into question.
And according to new Wall Street Journal reporting, it’s a trial that CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself was trying to settle for $450 million on a phone call with the FTC chair in late March — considerably lower than the $30 billion fine the Commission had proposed, and a bargain compared to what it would cost the business were it forced to sell off either of the apps in question.
You’re gonna need a smaller moat
On Monday, the first day of the trial, an FTC lawyer claimed that Meta chiefs were aware that the acquisitions would help the company build a “moat” to fend off competition in the personal social networking industry, creating a monopoly in a space that includes only two other platforms, per the FTC’s argument: Snapchat and smaller platform MeWe.
Meta argued that the Commission has “gerrymandered a fictitious market” with this take, in a company blog post titled, “The FTC’s Weak Case Against Meta Ignores Reality,” which was posted a day before the trial kicked off.
However, the social giant was clearly keen to keep the case out of court — having already forked out the largest tech company fine in FTC history in 2019, handing over $5 billion for violating consumers’ privacy. Looking at how Meta’s business is made up, its attempts to shield its apps from the legal spotlight make a lot of sense.
Since it acquired Instagram for a reported $1 billion in April 2012, Meta’s quarterly revenues are up more than 40x, while ~98% of the $48.4 billion it posted in Q4 2024 came from its family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
The division is also much more profitable for Meta than its other revenue stream. Apps have brought in a whopping $264 billion since Q4 2020, compared with Reality Labs (home to the company’s AI operations and metaverse ambitions), which has burned $60 billion in the same time frame.
