Zuckerberg tells court he made WhatsApp and Instagram better

Towards the extremity of Mark Zuckerberg’s grounds successful a Washington, DC courthouse, a grin flashed crossed his face. 

Meta’s pb attorney, Mark Hansen, had asked the CEO if helium was “happy” astir paying $19 cardinal for WhatsApp successful 2014.

Zuckerberg flashed a grin, took a little pause, and responded, “I’d bash it again.”

Over the past decade, the increasing standard of Instagram and WhatsApp cemented Meta arsenic 1 of the astir almighty companies connected earth. Now, the US government, via a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit, is trying to unwind those acquisitions done a proceedings that began connected April 14th. Zuckerberg spent astir 13 hours crossed 3 days answering questions from the FTC and Meta lawyers. Much of that clip connected Wednesday was devoted to attempting to refute 1 halfway argument: that helium bought some apps to instrumentality them retired and not to marque them better.

The FTC contends that WhatsApp was acquired due to the fact that Zuckerberg and his executives were disquieted astatine the clip that backstage messaging apps would turn into fully-fledged societal media businesses. From the witnesser stand, Zuckerberg acknowledged that it was “something I thought about,” but that helium thought it would beryllium “extremel …

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