[shagie]

Instagram c. 2012 was just burning VC money and had no plans for how it could be profitable. It wasn't until Facebook bought them that there was some thought about how to make it profitable.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3019351/will-instagrams-vogue-li...

> On Thursday, the company announced that it would begin introducing photo and video advertisements on the service, its first attempt to generate revenue since Facebook acquired the startup for $1 billion.

> ...

> It’s a sentiment Systrom has repeated to me for years–and an idea that many revenue-free startups have begun parroting. For entrepreneurs without a business model, it’s become almost fashionable to declare that they’re simply creating a new model altogether: Whatever it is–by god–won’t involve pesky traditional ads. No! The ads won’t be disruptive or annoying–they’ll be wanted and loved! (I’m waiting for the call, SnapChat.) But when push comes to shove, more often than not, the ads turn out to be nothing more than, well, traditional advertisements. See: any Promoted Tweets.

Yes, it was on track to be something big... but it wasn't on track to be able to make any money and was more likely to flounder once it ran out of VC interest and get bought for cheap by Twitter.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/

There's a reason that chart only starts listing revenue in 2015.

While Instagram might have been keeping Zuckerberg up at night with nightmares - one shouldn't pretend that it had a path to making money and being able to keep running.

[passwordoops]

And in a world where competition is allowed to see its course, Instagram would have disappeared. And further down the line, Facebook's poor decisions would have spelled oblivion for them too.

It also means the 2010s may have perhaps seen investors print billions into businesses that actually matter and deliver real innovation

[fallingknife]

If Instagram would have disappeared on its own, Facebook would have just built it in house. They spent $1 billion on it because it was cheaper to do that than to start from scratch. And how could anti-trust possibly stop that?

[kennywinker]

That's just wrong. It doesn't cost $1 billion to copy instagram, at most it'd cost a few million. By buying them, you not only get the app/feature set - more importantly you also remove them from the market as a competitor. This is exactly what we're seeing play out with tiktok. If FB could have bought tiktok, they would have - they couldn't, so they cloned it for far less than $1bil (fb reels) - but now we have a situation of two competing services that users can compare and contrast and prefer. The market it segmented. Which is bad for facebook's shareholders, but good for users, workers, and advertisers. This is exactly why we need good anti-trust

[mrkurt]

The point of antitrust is to encourage that. That's competition. We want Facebook to build net new things.

Facebook's not all that good at building new things, though. Most big companies aren't. Partially because they don't need to be.

[scarface74]

And how would that be a better outcome for the startups?

If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft and Apple have both been around for over four decades “creating new things”.

[salawat]

They really haven't. They've been acquiring startups, digesting and rebranding said startups innovations with an in house version, and (arguably innovating) in finding ways to plaster a transaction layer into solved problems that previously lacked a recurring revenue compatible transaction framework.

In short, subsidizing themselves by abandoning one time purchasable software, and replacing it with either ad serving or subscription based versions.

[mrkurt]

I don't mind startups failing. I would prefer that startups fail. I would prefer big companies fail. It's healthy for companies to die.

Apple and Amazon are more of a vertical integration problem. They expand their market power by monopolizing the vertical supply chain.

Microsoft acquires companies to increase their market power. Skype, GitHub, LinkedIn, now Activision.

[fallingknife]

Monopolizing a vertical supply chain isn't even a concept that makes sense. The point is that with a monopoly customers have only one purchasing option. This condition does not exist when a company integrates vertically.

[scarface74]

Yes because Skype and GitHub are market leaders and it’s really hard to change your git origin.

How is Apple “monopolizing the vertical supply chain” while having only 13% of the global cell phone market?

[scarface74]

Or it just would have copied Instagram’s feature set like it’s done dozens of times with other competitors.

Or it would have just hired all of its founders to recreate it.

Do you now also want to stop acquihires?