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FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle’s final day

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Zuckerberg’s ‘really smart’ call.

The FTC has argued that Meta paid a premium for WhatsApp beyond its market value, which it was willing to do squelch a potential competitor. But Boasberg asks Hemphill to reconcile how that could be the case for Instagram as well, whose $1 billion price tag now looks quite low given its explosive growth and money-making ability. Hemphill says the price needs to be analyzed within the context of 2012. But the judge still wonders, “why can’t you think about it that Mark Zuckerberg is really smart,” and saw value where others didn’t?

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