“I was in disbelief, awe and shock,” says the 14-year-old student who found out about the nod from Facebook after getting home from school at Lakefield College School. The FTC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Peterborough’s phenom fiddler Irish Millie is having a banner year, first with the release of her debut album and now with a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Young Performer of the Year.
Facebook declined to discuss the information in the memo. Facebook’s claim regarding the difficulty of a potential breakup would also be unlikely to carry legal weight, he added.
A government antitrust case against Facebook would likely rely on the argument that the company made serial acquisitions to reduce competition, a question that wasn’t considered when the Federal Trade Commission originally chose not to oppose the Instagram and WhatsApp deals, he said.
The argument is “surprisingly weak,” saidĪ Columbia University law professor, tech critic and author who has said Facebook should be broken up. Facebook’s contention that past government inaction on the acquisitions should limit current action has been criticized. For the government to revisit the Instagram deal or Facebook’s 2014 WhatsApp acquisition years later-after the company had invested heavily to make the deals successful-would “send a disquieting message to the business community,” the paper says. The paper also warns of the message an antitrust probe would send.Īntitrust enforcers reviewed 2012 emails in which Facebook CEOĬited the difficulty of competing with Instagram as a rationale for buying the company and still approved the deal, the paper says. “A ‘breakup’ of Facebook is thus a complete nonstarter,” the paper says.
The paper, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, says that unwinding Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp would be nearly impossible to achieve, forcing the company to spend billions of dollars maintaining separate systems, weakening security and harming users’ experience. Facebook says a breakup would defy established law and harm consumers. Facebook Says Government Breakup of Instagram, WhatsApp Would Be ‘Complete Nonstarter’ By Jeff Horwitz KEY TAKEAWAYS 1.
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