"Google and co-worker." Facebook...Instagram on the brink of forced sale

A U.S. court trial to determine whether Facebook parent Meta Platforms will be forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp will take place in Washington, D.C., on April 14 next year.

According to Bloomberg News and others, Judge James Boasberg of the Federal Court in Washington, D.C., set a trial date for an antitrust violation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FTC) against Meta Platforms on the 25th local time.

Earlier, Judge Boasberg ruled in November 2022 that he could proceed with an antitrust lawsuit filed by the FTC.

At the time, he reversed a ruling in June 2021 in which a federal court in Washington, D.C., had initially dismissed an anti-trust lawsuit and decided to proceed with the lawsuit.

The lawsuit began in 2020, during the first Donald Trump administration.

The FTC filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms (then Facebook), which acquired Instagram (acquired in 2012) and WhatsApp (2014) one after another.

Facebook's takeover of the social media market by buying up emerging competitors constitutes an anti-trust violation.

FTC Claims Sale Of Instagram And WhatsApp To Resolve Antitrust Violations

Earlier this month, Judge Boasberg refused to accept Meta Platforms' claim that the lawsuit should be dismissed.

However, Judge Boasberg remained skeptical of the FTC's chances of winning the case on the 13th, Bloomberg said.

"The FTC faces difficult questions about whether their arguments will be acceptable at trial," he said. "Sometimes the FTC's positions reach their limits in creaky anti-trust precedents."

Meanwhile, in August, a federal court in Washington, D.C., the first trial court ruled that Google, the world's largest search engine company, had taken control of the search market as an antitrust violation.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to order the forced sale of Google's web browser Chrome as a way to eliminate its monopoly.