I fail to see what the public benefit would be of breaking out Instagram and WhatsApp, or exposing the APIs more widely.
* Are customers lives improved by browsing lifestyle photos on Instagram^notFB ?
* WhatsApp makes voice and video calls. How does it affect me that it's part of FB? How is my life improved if its not? Another voice/video app will somehow thrive?
* Opening their APIs so that a couple of startups can build custom FB and Instagram apps? One of them will succeed and the rest will fail. This is the public benefit?
There's such a huge difference between this and Microsoft's anti-competitive case: Microsoft controlled your entire computer. When they restricted apps, they restricted your entire ability to operate your computer, connect to the internet, etc. Here, FB is constraining... your access to social data on FB??
> WhatsApp makes voice and video calls. How does it affect me that it's part of FB? How is my life improved if its not? Another voice/video app will somehow thrive?
WhatsApp used to have strong guarantees against tracking (and ads) as long as they were independent.
They were wildly profitable and was my favorite messaging service until Facebook bought them.
Now I reluctantly use Telegram, but I'd much rather have something like WhatsApp back were I can pay real money for the service instead of paying with my metadata.
* Are customers lives improved by browsing lifestyle photos on Instagram^notFB ?
* WhatsApp makes voice and video calls. How does it affect me that it's part of FB? How is my life improved if its not? Another voice/video app will somehow thrive?
* Opening their APIs so that a couple of startups can build custom FB and Instagram apps? One of them will succeed and the rest will fail. This is the public benefit?
There's such a huge difference between this and Microsoft's anti-competitive case: Microsoft controlled your entire computer. When they restricted apps, they restricted your entire ability to operate your computer, connect to the internet, etc. Here, FB is constraining... your access to social data on FB??