Facebook’s strategy against service breakdown
Users of Instagram and Messenger can now receive cross-service messages send. Facebook’s platforms can be administered, managed and synchronized in an account center. According to the company, the focus is on interoperability and the benefits for users. At the same time, however, this merger may make it difficult to break up the platforms – and this is an issue.
With the connections, Facebook can secure its services even more against competing products, and it also seems being part of the provider’s strategy to make separating services more difficult. That, in turn, could also influence any decisions made by the Cartel Office. In Germany there is already a decision by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) that Facebook is exploiting its dominant position to persuade users to reveal their data. The Bundeskartellamt had previously forbidden the merging of data from various services.
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“There are no serious doubts about Facebook’s dominant position on the German market for social networks or that Facebook is dominant The position with the conditions of use prohibited by the Cartel Office has been misused “, confirmed the BGH in a press release.
European and US competition watchdogs
The EU Parliament is also concerned with the Digital Service Act (DSA ), which is supposed to regulate the internet giants. Some of the parliamentarians advocate mandatory interoperability of messenger services. That Facebook calls its links in this way is probably related to this requirement. For the EU, however, interoperability does not mean between Facebook services, but rather a programming interface and the ability to communicate between services from different providers.
Now a 14-page paper has appeared in which Facebook is its Defense prepared in case of impending break-up. Apart from the fact that it would not be legally tenable, Facebook believes that the split would cost billions of dollars and harm users, writes the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which has the document. In the USA, the competition authority has also initiated investigations and requested information from Facebook, but also from Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. Initially, it is primarily a matter of poaching employees and taking over strategies. According to the WSJ, results will be presented this week.
Facebook took over Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 and then invested heavily in the expansion and integration of the services. Reversing this would be almost impossible, too expensive and would also weaken security and endanger the user experience because of the management of different systems.