Enlarge image
Facebook logo: no advantages of competition?
Photo: Uli Deck / dpa
Facebook has shown relief at the dismissal of monopoly lawsuits by a federal judge.
The company said it was "pleased that today's decision recognizes the shortcomings of government lawsuits against Facebook."
The company competes “fairly” with other providers for “people's time and attention” - and possibly also for investors' money.
Because after Facebook had won the victory against the US antitrust authority FTC and more than 40 states, the already rising price of the company's shares continued to rise.
With an increase of almost five percent, the price per share on the New York Stock Exchange rose to $ 357.89.
This is the first time that the stock market value of the Facebook group has exceeded one trillion dollars.
The FTC and the attorneys general of more than 40 states filed two lawsuits against Facebook in December.
In it they had demanded that Facebook should separate from the online network Instagram and the messenger service WhatsApp.
They argued that the Internet company had created a monopoly "in order to deny consumers the advantages of competition".
Missing information on market power
The Washington federal judge James Boasberg came to the conclusion, however, that the FTC had not been able to "conclusively" demonstrate that Facebook had created a monopoly on the market for online networks.
The lawsuit contained "almost nothing concrete on the crucial question of how much power Facebook actually has".
The judge criticized the argument that Facebook controls more than 60 percent of the online network market, and the data on which the FTC came to this conclusion had not even been explained, the judge criticized.
He rejected the lawsuit filed by the states, saying that they had reacted too late to Facebook's purchase of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
The authorities can appeal against the decision.
EU takes a different route to control Facebook
In addition, Facebook must prepare for further steps against its market power. A bipartisan group of MPs introduced separate bills to Congress a good two weeks ago that would fundamentally change the country's competition rules. It is planned, for example, to simplify the break-up of dominant companies or to make it more difficult for large corporations to buy up smaller competitors.
The President of the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), Achim Wambach, assessed the judgment as a “setback for the American authorities”.
The court's criticism that the authorities had not proven that Facebook had a monopoly in the market for social networks cast an unfavorable light on the preparation of this lawsuit.
But it also shows "how difficult it is to clearly delimit the markets from one another in order to determine market power in the digital world."
The European Union went its own way with its proposal for a Digital Markets Act (DMA), said Wambach.
The addressee of the DMA are so-called gatekeepers, which are defined by qualitative criteria such as a certain number of users.
This eliminates the need to have to prove a dominant position.
apr / AFP