Mails Zuckerberg: Facebook bought Instagram in part to ‘neutralize competitor’

Emails from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg point out that one of Facebook’s reasons for wanting to buy Instagram was to ‘neutralize a competitor’ and to ‘buy time’ to build Instagram features into its own app.

In an email to then financial director David Ebersman, Zuckerberg says that a purchase of Instagram means that Facebook has the time to integrate the mechanism of Instagram into Facebook in order to thwart future competition. “We’re basically buying time,” Zuckerberg said in the emails The Verge posted online, which a US congressman brought up during the Facebook director’s hearing Wednesday night.

Zuckerberg’s plan involved Facebook buying Instagram and allowing it to exist as a standalone app, while building the network’s social mechanics into its own app. By letting those two separate apps exist, any new competitors who try to grab market share with the same kind of social network would have a harder time.

Zuckerberg says in the email that the founders of Instagram do not appear to be taking over. “But with a high bid of 500 million or a billion dollars, they should consider it,” said the Facebook founder. Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars. At the time, the company had 13 employees and no turnover. In addition, it had just done an investment round the week before, with investors setting the value at around $ 500 million.