That’s already the case that the government limits these transactions, and for good reasons.

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

You mean like they stopped Sprint and T-Mobile?

Like they should have in my opinion, yes.

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...

Sprint has been losing money and users for over a decade. Their chief backer was tired of pouring money into it. The alternative wasn’t four major carriers or three major carriers after a merger. The alternative was three carriers, one out of business and the other three buying the spectrum.

Instagram is now worth something like 100 billion dollars.

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 is worth 100 billion because Facebook leveraged its advertising network and integrated it heavily with FB proper.