‘Market Watchdog investigates major Facebook Acquisitions’. The American market watchdog FTC investigates the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp through Facebook.
The regulator wants to know if Facebook purchased potential rivals before those companies could affect Facebook’s position.
Purchasing policy is central to the investigation, the insiders say.
The FTC has contacted the founders of various companies purchased by Facebook.
Facebook took over WhatsApp in 2014 for the huge amount of 19.3 billion dollars.
Little real competition
Instagram was already acquired in 2012 for around 1 billion dollars.
With WhatsApp, Instagram and its own Facebook Messenger, Facebook holds the three most used social messaging services in the world.
That makes Facebook primarily its own biggest competitor, warn critics.
Facebook has been under attack for some time.
The company recently received a 5 billion dollars fine for some privacy scandals.
The company also looks at abuse of power by Facebook and criticises Facebook for not doing enough against fake news,
and foreign interference in elections in the United States and Europe, among others.
Be First to Comment