> The creators just sold it, private company, private service they could have sold it to anyone they wanted.
I understand and agree with your take now, but this sentence from your last comment seemed like a different line of thinking.
If a creator can just sell it to anyone because it's a private company, that's false and that's a different argument than the specifics of this case not triggering antitrust law.
WhatsApp being bought by Apple could have easily been construed as anticompetitive, so it wasn't just that a creator can sell a private company to anyone they want. (Also, Facebook Messenger could be a reason that Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp is anticompetitive, but neither service was as prevalent at the time).
- agreements between competitors, also referred to as horizontal conduct
- monopolization, also referred to as single firm conduct