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When Instagram was purchased by Facebook it was not viewed as a competitor at all, it was widely viewed as a terrible decision with FB massively overpaying.
by dean177 5y ago
When Instagram was purchased by Facebook it was not viewed as a competitor at all, it was widely viewed as a terrible decision with FB massively overpaying.
- ethbr0 5y agoI'm not sure how this cuts against the claim. In this case, wide views at the time were wrong, and Facebook knew lighting money on fire was worth it... if it kept the spigot flowing.
- nl 5y agoThe only people who thought FB overpaid for Instagram were the same people who complained that FB wasn't a real business and was going to collapse at any moment. Ironically many of these people were HN commentators. Anyone who worked in the space thought it was the most desirable property available, and wasn't surprised at the price given that Google was looking at social properties at the time too. And no matter what people on HN thought, FB did buy Insta because it was a competitor: The exchange was one of several potentially damning pieces of evidence in documents obtained by the U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, showing that Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook’s market power over competitors and bought Instagram because he was concerned about the fast growing company’s potential to turn users away from Facebook. https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/facebook-bought-instagram-to-quash-competitor-documents-show-11596068397572.html https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/facebook-bought-inst...