Time to talk about anticompetitive behavior in big tech. There’s actually been some hard evidence surface over the past few days, and it’s pretty damning for Facebook. We take a look at their history of anticompetitive stunts over the past decade: their acquisition of Instagram, their attempted takeover of Snapchat, the WhatsApp deal and more.
For instance, Facebook gave Amazon special access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising. In another case, it shut down access to a new messaging app because it had become too popular and could end up competing with Facebook. This wasn’t just a couple of instances though; Facebook cut off access to thousands of developers. Also, court documents suggest that Facebook did this deliberately to protect their position in the market, while they were publicly saying that it was to ‘promote privacy’.
There have of course been a number of similar cases in the past — even just pertaining to Facebook alone. They acquired Instagram in 2012. Granted, IG only had 50 m users back then, but it was displaying a tremendous growth rate, and it could have become a competitor to Facebook. Instead, Facebook bought it and married it up with Instagram, dominating the social space even further.
in 2013, Facebook tried to pull the same trick again with Snapchat (and yet again, without any challenge by the FTC). Rather, it was Snapchat’s founder who simply didn’t want to sell it, even for $3 billion. What did Facebook do in response? They copied the core features from Snapchat, basically stealing the Stories feature, launching it both on FB and IG, and also adding filters and stickers for good measure.
Then, in 2014, Facebook decided to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion. Another purchase that should not have been allowed to go through. And because WhatsApp has access to your contacts and phone numbers, this is a treasure trove for Facebook, in that it now knows even more about who you know — even if they are not on Facebook.
And what’s next — Facebook trying to launch a cryptocurrency. Of course, not before they made sure to ban ads for other cryptocurrencies on Facebook. If that is not an egregious display of anticompetitive behavior, what is?
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