{"id":26461,"date":"2025-04-23T09:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26461"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:25:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:25:01","slug":"at-metas-antitrust-trial-a-bygone-internet-era-comes-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26461","title":{"rendered":"At Meta\u2019s Antitrust Trial, a Bygone Internet Era Comes Back to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the landmark antitrust case, tech executives have harked back to a Silicon Valley age when social apps like Facebook, Path, Orkut and Google Plus boomed.<\/p>\n

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The most telling moment of the U.S. antitrust trial against Meta<\/a> so far came halfway through more than 10 hours of testimony<\/a> from Mark Zuckerberg, the company\u2019s chief executive.<\/p>\n

On the witness stand last week, Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook and later renamed his company Meta<\/a>, was asked by government lawyers to watch a seven-minute video of an interview he gave at a tech conference more than a decade ago. With his brow furrowed and eyes scrunched, the 40-year-old tech billionaire watched his 28-year-old self describe how the world of 2012 had \u201creally underestimated\u201d his company.<\/p>\n

Back then, smartphones were a burgeoning computing platform rather than the dominant one. Facebook was still primarily used on desktop computers, and Mr. Zuckerberg\u2019s social network was at risk of losing users to a flurry of start-ups.<\/p>\n

The older Mr. Zuckerberg occasionally winced as he watched his younger self on video discuss some of his early competitive concerns, such as the potential for Dropbox<\/a>, a file-sharing company, to become a rival in photo sharing. In hindsight, he said on the stand, it was \u201cpretty ridiculous\u201d to think that Dropbox would compete with Facebook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was, in short, a reminder of a very different era \u2014 an age of social apps, Silicon Valley hubris and Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs, which Meta\u2019s antitrust trial has plunged people back into, in a courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. At issue in the landmark case is what could have happened if Mr. Zuckerberg had never made two key deals, buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and whether he quashed competition with the acquisitions.<\/p>\n

Sitting in Judge James E. Boasberg\u2019s courtroom for the first two weeks of testimony has been like entering a time warp. Executives who have long since left Meta \u2014 including Sheryl Sandberg<\/a>, Mr. Zuckerberg\u2019s former second-in-command, and Kevin Systrom<\/a>, a founder of Instagram \u2014 are main witnesses. Lawyers have dredged up emails that date back more than a decade.<\/p>\n

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In the landmark antitrust case, tech executives have harked back to a Silicon Valley age when social apps like Facebook, Path, Orkut and Google Plus boomed.The most telling moment of the U.S. antitrust trial against Meta so far came halfway through more than 10 hours of testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, the company\u2019s chief executive.On the witness stand last week, Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook and later renamed his company Meta, was asked by government lawyers to watch a seven-minute video of an interview he gave at a tech conference more than a decade ago. With his brow furrowed and eyes scrunched, the 40-year-old tech billionaire watched his 28-year-old self describe how the world of 2012 had \u201creally underestimated\u201d his company.Back then, smartphones were a burgeoning computing platform rather than the dominant one. Facebook was still primarily used on desktop computers, and Mr. Zuckerberg\u2019s social network was at risk of losing users to a flurry of start-ups.The older Mr. Zuckerberg occasionally winced as he watched his younger self on video discuss some of his early competitive concerns, such as the potential for Dropbox, a file-sharing company, to become a rival in photo sharing. In hindsight, he said on the stand, it was \u201cpretty ridiculous\u201d to think that Dropbox would compete with Facebook.It was, in short, a reminder of a very different era \u2014 an age of social apps, Silicon Valley hubris and Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs, which Meta\u2019s antitrust trial has plunged people back into, in a courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. At issue in the landmark case is what could have happened if Mr. Zuckerberg had never made two key deals, buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and whether he quashed competition with the acquisitions.Sitting in Judge James E. Boasberg\u2019s courtroom for the first two weeks of testimony has been like entering a time warp. Executives who have long since left Meta \u2014 including Sheryl Sandberg, Mr. Zuckerberg\u2019s former second-in-command, and Kevin Systrom, a founder of Instagram \u2014 are main witnesses. Lawyers have dredged up emails that date back more than a decade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26463,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26464,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26461\/revisions\/26464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}