The following can be attributed to Computer & Communications Industry Association President Matt Schruers:
“CCIA strongly supports antitrust enforcement when consumers are harmed. However, the remedy needs to be tailored to the evidence, and not based on an artificially narrow definition of the market. Unwinding Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 is a drastic remedy that would not only harm consumers but also will have a chilling effect on innovation and the US innovation ecosystem.
“CCIA has supported merger reviews generally as a way for regulators to do analysis and make better future decisions.Refining policy through retrospective merger reviews can be useful for clarity and better outcomes. Using them to declare a ‘do-over’ for regulators when the mergers at issue were approved by the relevant authorities is inappropriate.
“We look forward to learning more about the facts and regulators’ evidence.”