Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram as it was a 'threat' to Facebook

The US House antitrust subcommittee has made public the email exchanges between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former chief financial officer David Ebersman, revealing that the company (and Zuckerberg, in particular) wanted to buy Instagram as it was a 'threat' to Facebook and it could have hurt the social network.

San Francisco: Rep Jerry Nadler (Democratic party NY) grilled Mark Zuckerberg about the Instagram 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 Mark Zuckerberg wanted to buy Instagram as it was becoming a threat to Facebook.

"Facebook, by its own admission saw Instagram as a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook," Nadler said during the hearing."So rather than compete with it, Facebook bought it. This is exactly the type of anti-competitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent," Nadler added.

Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram as it was a 'threat' to Facebo

"I think Federal Trade Commission had all of these documents and unanimously voted at the time not to challenge the Instagram acquisition," Mark Zuckerberg said.

"In 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."

Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram as it was a 'threat' to Facebo

(Inputs from IANS)