US judge dismisses FTC antitrust lawsuits against Facebook
- Judge James Boasberg said officials failed to ‘plausibly’ establish that the social network had created a monopoly
- Facebook’s shares surged after the decision, lifting the company’s valuation above US$1 trillion for the first time
Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court of Washington dismissed the case filed in December by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states, which could have rolled back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and the messaging platform WhatsApp.
The federal lawsuit “failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element … that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for personal social networking services,” the judge said in a 53-page opinion, while allowing authorities the opportunity to refile the case.
In lawsuits filed in December that were consolidated in federal court, US and state officials called for the divestment of Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that Facebook had acted to “entrench and maintain its monopoly to deny consumers the benefits of competition.”
The judge issued a separate opinion dismissing the case by the states, saying attorneys general had waited too long to bring the case for the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
The judge said the FTC complaint “says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had … it is almost as if the agency expects the court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist.”