Federal courtrooms aren’t usually places where billionaires relive their most insecure moments, but this week, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand and did exactly that. It was a real back-to-2012 moment: the Facebook founder in a navy suit and powder blue tie, revisiting the time he realized his billion-dollar empire couldn’t figure out how to make a decent photo-sharing app.
Faced with Instagram eating their lunch during the mobile boom, Zuckerberg opted for the traditional Silicon Valley solution to innovation problems: he bought the competition. Now the US government is trying to unwind that deal, claiming Meta wasn’t trying to compete so much as it was trying to vaporize anything that threatened its reign over online social interaction.
