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Sandberg, who left Meta in 2022 after more than 14 years as Mark Zuckerberg’s No. 2, was the senior most trade leader of Meta when the company acquired both Instagram and WhatsApp, provided its significant insight into its strategy. The FTC argues that they were completed in the deal – 2012 and 2014 respectively – gave Meta a monopoly on the social networking industry and should be undone.
The FTC quickly went to reduce Sandberg’s credibility. FTC lawyer Susan Mousar tried to establish that people mainly use the services of the company to stay connected with friends and family, the social media market share the agency says that Meta has illegally monopolized.
Sandberg first stated that most of Facebook’s users were “probably not” using the service for that time until she left the company. He quickly changed his reply, however, when the statement from September 2022 was presented with testimony, where he said, “I think most of what these people do is part of.”
According to the previous internal email, at the time of Instagram deal, Zuckerberg asked Sandberg if there was a meta overped for the meta-sharing app, for which it offered $ 1 billion. He replied, “Yes, it is definitely too much.” At the stand on Wednesday, Sandberg felt differently. “I don’t think today anyone would say that we have paid a lot for Instagram,” he said.
Meta has aggressively pushed back against FTC’s monopoly claims, saying that it was able to help Instagram and WhatsApp grow up, as they could ever do on their own. Meta also claims FTC that it dominates social networking, arguing that it competes with a variety of platforms, in which the bidens limited picke, snap ink. Snapchat, Google’s YouTube, Apple Inc. K x. of IMESSAGE and Elon Musk
Sandberg joined the Fledeling Company, known as Facebook Inc., after the creation of the Google Search Advertising Business of Alphabet Inc. in 2008. Her arrival marked a significant moment for Facebook as she brought a meaningful management experience for the company, as it was starting to create her own advertising business under Zuckerberg, which was 23 years old when she joined.
As the second-in-command of the meta, Sandberg was involved in several discussions around achieving Instagram and WhatsApp and appeared in several emails and other internal documents presented during the first three days of the test, which began on Monday. Like Zuckerberg, Sandberg is seen as a prominent witness by both sides and began her testimony under questioning by FTC, which challenged her on some pre -commercial decisions in the meta.
In an attempt to show the monopoly power of Meta in the social media market, Mousar showed a board presentation to Sandberg from March 2018, soon after the Cambridge Analytica Data Privacy Scandal. According to the document, there was a decline in a metric used by the company to measure the user’s satisfaction. However, “Core Engagement Matrix had no visual effects” – an indication for FTC that consumers did not have other options.
Sandberg was also asked about ways that the company tried to harm the contestants, especially by blocking its advertisements on Facebook.
In a message from Sandberg in July 2011, the employees of the company discussing the launch of Google, Google’s launch, wrote that “the most important thing to accept is that we have a real competition for the first time and consumers have real options.” Next year, Sandberg and Zuckerberg discussed whether to block advertisements promoting Google. Sandberg wrote in a message from August 2012, “I will block Google.”
Sandberg on Wednesday tried to reopen her comments about Google’s Meta being the only real competitor from the stand. “I said to rally the soldiers,” he said. “I don’t think it is a proper reading of history. People had never done a direct copy of our product before.”
Zuckerberg wrapped his testimony first on Wednesday after three days at the stand. He spent most of the time of that time under a stressful inquiries by FTC lawyer, Daniel Mathason, who challenged him to defend his company’s acquisition strategy and argued that Meta deliberately sought to buy contestants instead of competing with him.
While Sandberg was not always closely involved in the company’s product decisions, he fulfilled the Meta efforts to turn on the profit and oversee his advertising business. A significant part of the FTC case is one allegation that consumers were damaged by the acquisition of meta. FTC lawyers have argued that Meta reduced the quality of the apps by increasing the number of ADS and by reducing the data privacy security of users.
Given his role of running the advertising operation of Mata, Sandberg hoped to come to the field of additional questions on Thursday whether Meta’s business decisions damaged WhatsApp and Instagram users.
Such more stories are available Bloomberg.com
