Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a US court Monday in a landmark antitrust trial in which his company is accused by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of abusing its market power to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become competitors. 

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The Meta chief and co-founder's last-ditch efforts to avoid a trial were thwarted as he stood in a Washington, DC courtroom to defend his company against the US government. 

Daniel Matheson, who is FTC's lead attorney for the case, asked Zuckerberg to reflect back, "In hindsight, you're glad you didn't sell to MySpace?" 

"Yes," Zuckerberg responded as the start of the trial dashed his hopes that Donald Trump's return to the office would see the government let up on the enforcement of antitrust law against Big Tech. 

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This trial is the result of a nearly six-year investigation into Meta's business practices, specifically its acquisition strategies and potential monopolistic behaviour. 

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Matheson shows old emails

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During the trial, Zuckerberg was shown an internal Facebook email from 2011 that warned Instagram was a hit on smartphones. The email apparently suggested that the photo and short-form video-sharing social networking service could easily copy what his social network offered. 

The lawyer showed another 2012 email regarding acquiring Instagram,  which suggested keeping the app running without any improvements. Meanwhile, Facebook can develop its own products. 

Zuckerberg downplayed those exchanges, calling them early talk before plans for Instagram came together. 

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Matheson showed more internal emails. In one of them, Zuckerberg was seen warning colleagues that Instagram's early rise was "really scary" for Facebook. 

He complained about the slow pace of development of Facebook in other emails. It appeared as if he complained about the slow progress in Fakebook's own photos app and Facebook Camera. He described members of the team as "checked out". 

"We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram’s growing so fast," Zuckerberg wrote in another internal email which was shown by Matheson. 

Another email was mentioned in the court, in which Zuckerberg had an exchange with an engineering executive working on Facebook Camera. The tech giant wrote, "If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we're doing now." 

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When Matheson asked if both apps were competing to connect friends with each other, Zuckerberg said, "Yeah, of course." "Was that the main thing that was going on? Not to my recollection." 

Meanwhile, Meta's lead lawyer Mark Hansen argued during the opening remarks that the FTC's market definition is artificially narrow by excluding TikTok, iMessage and other services. 

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Hansen said that the case was "a grab bag of FTC theories at war with the facts and at war with the law." 

The outcome of this trial could have significant implications for Meta's future operations and structure, potentially impacting its ability to make large acquisitions or altering its business model. 

Monday was Day 1 of the trial and is expected to last several weeks.