When Mark Zuckerberg feared Google will buy Instagram, and then over the next few years they could…

Mark Zuckerberg was deeply concerned about Google potentially acquiring Instagram before Facebook purchased the photo-sharing app in 2012, internal emails revealed during the ongoing Meta antitrust trial.”If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile, or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now,” Zuckerberg wrote in September 2011, according to documents presented by the Federal Trade Commission.

The trial has exposed Facebook’s strategic thinking in the months leading up to its $1 billion Instagram acquisition.