Lauren Feiner

Meta and the FTC point to different parts of Google’s filings to international regulators to reinforce their views of the market. In an Australian filing where Google was attempting to avoid a social media probe, it stated that even though digital products can have overlapping audiences, “there are a number of use cases that only social media platforms such as Facebook can satisfy.” It earlier told European regulators that it competes with social networks for users.

The FTC presents Filner with a post-mortem document about YouTube’s 2014-2019 experiment with adding social features, such as in-app messaging. “We learned that taking a page from social apps and bluntly asking for contact access in the YouTube app would likely lead to user backlash and rejection,” the document reads. “Users who probably hadn’t batted an eyelash about providing their contacts to Snapchat didn’t see YouTube as a relevant app to share contacts with.”

Filner is currently a senior director of product management at YouTube. The FTC appears to be attempting to demonstrate that YouTube serves a distinct market from Meta’s apps and is not a direct competitor in the “personal social networking” market it has defined for this case.

Goetz says the $19 billion deal was reasonable because, like other companies that get acquired early on, “it looks like a high price, but with the benefit of time, it’s very clear that these young private companies had the potential to emerge into independent public companies.” The FTC has contended that Meta was willing to pay what it did because it was trying to get a potential competitor off the market.

Goetz is supporting Zuckerberg’s earlier characterization of the WhatsApp founders’ “disdain” for advertising and adding social features. He says that, before WhatsApp was acquired, Sequoia partners suggested launching a new app with social media features as a potential business model, but the founders wouldn’t have it. “We were quickly shot down and dismissed,” Goetz recalls. “They were very clear.”

Koum forwarded Goetz a message he got from Zuckerberg in 2013, asking if he’d consider selling for a higher price. “Clear to us that you could get tencent, facebook and google into a bidding war (with microsoft and yahoo trailing). Suggest you avoid the lunch and continue with your craftiness on any reply,” Goetz counseled. He testifies that he wanted Koum to recognize that they had lots of options and could fetch a higher price by playing bidders off each other.

That’s what WhatsApp founder Jan Koum told his investor, Jim Goetz, in a 2012 email. Koum referred to it as a “rumor” Zuckerberg heard, and that he worried Tencent would use the messaging app to compete with Facebook outside of China. “I told him I’ll let him know if we ever do get an offer we would ever consider,” Koum wrote about his interaction with Zuckerberg. “That made him feel better.”

A 2013 Sequoia internal memo notes that, “Multiple companies with a combined market cap in excess of $750B have reached out to WhatsApp at various points in time including Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Tencent and NHN. Strategic interest is likely due to the company’s unique positioning as a large, global, independent and growing mobile-only asset.”

Judge Boasberg asks Goetz why he prefers that his portfolio companies go public. Goetz responded that it’s much better for his firm’s returns when promising companies go public, citing YouTube as an example of a company that was acquired and is now a highly valuable asset within the larger Google conglomerate. “They’re typically category leaders, they developed something that is unique, and in most cases, those companies compound 10x in the public markets,” he says.