authorities rejected Facebook offer to foster competitors’ growth

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

Antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with almost every state attorney general, filed lawsuits against Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) this month alleging it is a monopoly and seeking to break up the social network.

Yet Facebook tried to head off the legal showdown by offering to license its code and its members’ connections to another company or developer to create their own platforms to compete against it.

As the subsequent lawsuits make clear, the offer was too little, too late.

The lawsuits primarily stem from Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, purchases the FTC itself…