Shares in Facebook Inc. surged today following a court ruling dismissing an antitrust complaint brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The 4% rise in Facebook’s share price catapulted the company’s market cap to $1 trillion for the first time. In passing $1 trillion, Facebook has become the fifth listed company in history to reach the mark behind Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Google LLC’s parent Alphabet Inc.

The surge in Facebook’s shares came just before 3 p.m. EDT as news broke that the federal court had dismissed the FTC’s antitrust case along with a parallel case brought by 48 state attorneys general.

The cases, filed in December, specifically targeted Facebook over its 2012 acquisition of Instagram and its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp. It was alleged that Facebook targeted potential competitive threats to its dominance, starting with Instagram.

The complaint details how Facebook executives, including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, identified Instagram as an “existential threat to Facebook’s monopoly power” before acquiring the app. A similar process is said to have taken place with WhatsApp as well, which the lawsuits claim was illegal anticompetitive conduct in violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

The lawsuits also claimed that Facebook imposes anticompetitive conditions on software developers. Specifically, it was claimed that Facebook enforced these policies by cutting off application programming interface access to any perceived competitive threats, specifically citing Facebook cutting off API access to the now-defunct Twitter Inc.-owned Vine short video service in 2013.

Should the lawsuits have been successful, Facebook would have been forced to divest assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC was also seeking an order to prohibit Facebook from placing anticompetitive conditions on software developers and to require the company to seek prior approval for future mergers and acquisitions.

However, the court did not agree. The ruling noted that though it did not agree with all of Facebook’s contentions, the FTC had failed to plead enough facts to establish its claims plausibly. But it also said the FTC could refile the case.

“We are pleased that today’s decisions recognize the defects in the government complaints against Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement. “We compete fairly every day to earn people’s time and attention and will continue to deliver great products for the people and businesses that use our services.”

Photo: Eston Bond/Flickr

---

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Show your support for our mission by joining our Cube Club and Cube Event Community of experts. Join the community that includes Amazon Web Services and soon to be Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and many more luminaries and experts.

Join Our Community 

We are holding our second cloud startup showcase on June 16. Click here to join the free and open Startup Showcase event.

 

“TheCUBE is part of re:Invent, you know, you guys really are a part of the event and we really appreciate your coming here and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

We really want to hear from you. Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Looking forward to seeing you at the event and in theCUBE Club.