Reported today on The Seattle Times For the full article visit:
FTC said to be considering blocking Facebook from combining WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram
SAN FRANCISCO - The Federal Trade Commission is considering seeking a preliminary injunction against Facebook to prevent the social network from integrating several of its messaging services, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The agency has discussed how the Silicon Valley company is stitching together the technical infrastructure underlying WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.
The FTC is weighing whether such an integration would make it harder to potentially break up Facebook, they said, especially if the agency determines that the company's acquisitions of some of those apps reduced competition in social networking. The agency has not made a final decision about what to do, the people said.
The FTC and Facebook declined to comment. The potential injunction was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
Seeking an injunction of this kind would be an uncommon step for a federal antitrust agency because officials rarely consider unwinding mergers that have already closed. A majority of FTC commissioners would need to approve the move in a formal vote, said an agency official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The agency would face a high bar in court to show that Facebook was about to violate antitrust laws or already had, this person said. A court is unlikely to issue an injunction simply to give the commission more time to investigate, the person said.
For months, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has been working to unify the technical systems of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. That would allow Facebook's more than
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