Zuckerberg wrote “Instagram can hurt us” days before acquisition

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg speaks via videoconference during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington. (credit: Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In a 2012 email six weeks before acquiring Instagram, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that one of his motivations for the acquisition was to "neutralize a potential competitor." The emails were revealed during today's hearing before the House antitrust committee featuring four technology moguls: Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Zuckerberg. The emails were first reported by the Verge.

Facebook was one of the Internet's biggest social networks in 2012, but its dominant position was not as secure then as it is today. There were a lot of rival social networks, and Zuckerberg worried his company would get caught flat-footed by the shift to smartphones.

Neutralizing a potential competitor?

On the evening of February 27, 2012, Zuckerberg emailed Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman about the possibility of acquiring "mobile app companies like Instagram and Path that are building networks that are competitive with our own." He worried that "if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us."

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