Meta wins antitrust trial as judge denies that it's a monopoly

After five years, Meta has emerged victorious from a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

In an opinion released Tuesday , U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that the FTC did not prove that Meta was violating antitrust law when it bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.

The FTC did manage to surface evidence showing that Meta — then called Facebook — was concerned about Instagram’s fast growth and the competition it could pose.

“One way of looking at this is that what we’re really buying is time,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote in February 2012, per internal Facebook emails that surfaced during the trial. “Even if some new competitors springs [sic] up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare,