When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said ‘Instagram can hurt us’

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an email to his chief financial officer David Ebersman told that Facebook intended to buy Instagram to give itself more time to thwart its competitors. The email was sent shortly before Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, according to Business Insider and The Verge.

The revelation comes as CEOs of the United States’ largest tech companies – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon Inc’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc’s Google and Apple Inc’s Tim Cook – gave virtual testimony before the US House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel.

Zuckerberg’s mail goes on to say, “Even if some new competitors spring up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again.