Read more about Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram as it was a ‘threat’ to Facebook on Business Standard. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a shocking sum at that time for a company with 13 employees<\/b>
\nThe US House antitrust subcommittee has made public the email exchanges between CEO and former chief financial officer David Ebersman, revealing that the company (and Zuckerberg, in particular) wanted to buy to avoid competition as it could have hurt the social network. Rep Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on Wednesday grilled Zuckerberg about the acquisition during the testimonies from the Big Tech CEOs, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple. The emails revealed that Zuckerberg wanted to buy as it was becoming a threat to \u00ab\u00a0Facebook, by its own admission saw Instagram as a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook,\u00a0\u00bb Nadler said during the hearing on Wednesday. \u00ab\u00a0So rather than compete with it, bought it. This is exactly the type of anti-competitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent,\u00a0\u00bb Nadler added. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a shocking sum at that time for a company with 13 employees, Instagram today has over one billion users and contributes over $20 billion to Facebook’s annual revenue. \u00ab\u00a0I think the FTC had all of these documents and unanimously voted at the time not to challenge the acquisition,\u00a0\u00bb Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. \u00ab\u00a0In hindsight, it probably looks obvious that Instagram would have reached the scale that it has today. But at the time, it was far from obvious.\u00a0\u00bb According to The Verge, the FTC completed its review of the acquisition in 2012 without holding any open hearings or issuing a public report. The agency said it might reopen the inquiry at an unspecified future date, \u00ab\u00a0as the public interest may require.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n