4 ms·

The press goes from calling out Facebook and zuckerberg as idiots for wildly overpaying for instragram to now saying that it was unfair they bought instagram.

• Barrin92 6y ago
  Instagram is less of an issue compared to whatsapp for the reasons you outlined, Facebook mostly took it to where it is, and it also has plenty of competition. TikTok, Twitter, Snap are all large. Whatsapp and Messenger have significant combined marketshare and it was already much more valuable when they bought it.
  • kace91 6y ago
    and it holds potentially less important data. I know many influencial people including first line politicians in my country that use whatsapp on the daily, while I really can't see any of them sharing confidential information on instagram of all places. And yes, using a service like that is an extremely bad decision in the first place, but that's where we are right now.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • em500 6y ago
    Whatsapp was something like 50 employees and a 400m users when FB bought them in 2014. Plenty of people (though not not all) were baffled by the 19B price that they paid at the time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7275470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7275470, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7272641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7272641), especially in the US where Whatsapp was/is relatively unpopular.
    • donor20 6y ago
      That's a great set of links. The hotmail comparison is apt - Microsoft basically trashed / dropped hotmail? So these acquisitions can go either way? The risk with what's up is definitely higher. That said, Facebook has an INCREDIBLE acquisition success rate with insta and whatsup.
      • Lammy 6y ago
        Facebook didn't make the WhatsApp acquisition blind. They had data from their Onavo VPN service showing exactly how popular it was compared to their own Messenger.
  • donor20 6y ago
    I can see that - I use neither and don't have the facebook app on my phone so for me it's irrelevant but I know internationally whatsup just crushes the local telcos.
• vixen99 6y ago
  'The Press' is a single entity?
  • seppin 6y ago
    It's not, anyone that uses that term or "Mainstream media" can instantly be dismissed.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • hnracer 6y ago
    The hivemind behind the press is a single entity
• mtgx 6y ago
  Honestly, any acquisition by a dominant player in any given market that costs over $100 million should probably be reviewed for antitrust. We'd do much better preventing monopolies from forming instead of trying to break them up 15 years later, after 99% of the damage was already done, consumers and customers have already suffered for it, and now you also have to deal with the break-up aftermath. It would maintain a healthier market with many more smaller players. Plus, if these companies have billions and billions of dollars to throw away at buying smaller competitors, surely they have enough money to create their own competitor. Not to mention this would actually create a new competitor in various markets rather than take one away from said market, which is what happens through an acquisition. Also remember that large companies/monopolies also hurt the jobs market - the fewer players that dominate an economy, the riskier that economy is and you have to bail them out, and also it puts downwards pressure on salaries for workers, because people have fewer options when switching jobs. It's only conglomerates with which you have little margin to negotiate your salary, too.
• turtleturtle 6y ago
  It's just the price of making a successful bet. Critics were fine with it when they were confident it would fail. They just can't stand being wrong so they're making an effort to make it true.
• bigpumpkin 6y ago
  How does overpaying for an acquisition preclude Facebook from forming a monopoly? If anything, Facebook has more incentives to overpay because of the monopolistic powers it would have.