Instagram’s ‘really scary’ rise and ‘Google threat’: When Mark Zuckerberg warned Facebook staff in an internal email

Mark Zuckerberg sent an email to colleagues at Facebook in 2011 warning them about the meteoric rise of Instagram in the app’s early days. The email, which emerged as a key piece of evidence in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust trial against Meta, revealed Zuckerberg’s apprehension about Instagram’s rising threat to Facebook’s dominance in the mobile photo-sharing market.The FTC argues that Meta’s acquisition of Instagram, along with WhatsApp, was not a strategic business move but a calculated attempt to eliminate potential competition.

“We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram’s growing so fast,” Zuckerberg wrote in an internal email that was shown to the court, as per The Verge. Meta acquired Instagram in 2012.