I hate FB as much as any other HNer but honestly how could DOJ go after them for predatory acquisitions like WhatsApp when the price they paid was (at the time) one of the largest startup acquisition prices of all time?
Facebook's business is ads.
Google + Facebook have a virtual duopoly on online ad revenue.
(Still does not mean this is not a problem)
Monopoly is defined by market share in a specific regions, not by the unavailability of alternatives (1). So it doesn't matter if there are "many other messaging apps" what matters is what's being used.
(1) https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Monopoly is with respect to a market. If everyone on the East Coast uses AT&T to the exclusion of any other provider, and you could only communicate with AT&T customers by becoming an AT&T customer, that's a monopoly on the customers on the East Coast. Even if everyone on the West Coast used Verizon.
The fact that the Facebook customers aren't all concentrated in a specific geographic area doesn't really change anything. If the only way to communicate with a large population of specific individuals is to use Facebook, they have a monopoly on the market for communication with those individuals.
That wouldn't be true if they were using a federated protocol -- like the telephone network is in real life, but like Facebook is not -- because then you could sign up for some other service and still "call" the people on Facebook.
Whenever there is a network effect, anyone with a monopoly on the network has a monopoly on a market.
Smaller ad tech companies? Literal scammers! Facebook lied about video views - everyone lies about impressions. But 0% of Google and Facebook's competitors' inventory converts, because it's shit traffic, carefully disguised and evasive of efforts to avoid it.
I don't use Facebook, I have no dog in this race.What are they even talking about though? It's a dumb as nails case.
"One allegation often made against Facebook is that it has strategically sought to buy small potential rivals, often at a big premium."
An exaggerated example would be google buying firefox for $100 billion. It's a ridiculous price, but it helps google's monopoly.
You can grow a monopoly by intentionally underselling your competitor out of business. Or you can grow your monopoly by overpaying for your competitor and buying him out. Rockefeller and Standard Oil used both tactics to monopolize oil.