Washington/Palo Alto: The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and several US states have filed lawsuits against social networking firm Facebook alleging it used ‘a buy or bury’ strategy to buy rivals to slay competition.
The twin lawsuits come after the US Justice Dept in October sued Google for fending off rivals using its sheer market power.
The lawsuits in Facebook’s case focus on the social networking giant’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion and its nearly $20 billion WhatsApp deal in 2014.
The regulators have called for the acquisitions to be unwound, which may spark a protracted legal challenge as these were cleared by the FTC.
Facebook’s counsel Jennifer Newstead has called the suits “revisionist history”.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told employees in a post on Facebook’s internal discussion platform that he did not anticipate “any impact on individual teams or roles” due to the suits, Reuters reported.
Facebook’s shares fell 3% after the news before recouping losses to close down 1.9%.