They would have created one, by doing the obvious thing. Selling ads.
I don't think they would need FB to figure out that they need to do that.
What are the chances that they could have grown organically? Do you really want the government to tell founders that they couldn’t accept Facebook’s $1 billion dollars? Would you want the government telling you who you couldn’t sell your property to?
Democracies and free markets are good at many things, but staying free is not one of those things. If Google and Facebook decided to merge tomorrow, the government would stop them, for good reasons. If Verizon and AT&T decide to merge, similarly so.
I was only suggesting that these restriction apply more strictly; and indeed that would dramatically change the market - similar time how existing regulation change the market so there’s no googbook or veriso&t
According to Wikipedia[0], """On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators""", that is, the government effectively banned it, but Sprint pulled out ahead of time saving everyone time and money.
They recently approved it -- a mistake in my opinion -- but again that just proves my point: This is already the rule. Your position appears to be that the government shouldn't have this power at all, mine is that it should be applied more strictly to enhance competition.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation_a...
If FB was offering them 1 billion, I am sure that there would have been many investors willing to out some money into it.
Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.
Could any of the chip design companies remain private? What would have happened to the company that Apple bought that made Workflow - that is now the Shortcuts app - if Apple had just built it in house? Would that have been a better outcome for consumers or the company behind Workflow?
In the case of technology companies, do you also want the government to stop acquihires?
If the government stopped acquisitions, the bigger companies could still just poach all of the employees.