Instagram’s perceived independence at Facebook would help Zuckerberg win some otherwise impossible deals with headstrong founders, especially in 2014, with the chat app WhatsApp and the virtual reality company Oculus VR. But mostly, the Instagram deal would give Zuckerberg a tremendous competitive advantage. One Facebook executive would later reflect on the relative importance of the deal: Imagine an alternate reality, in which Microsoft buys Apple while Apple is still small. That would have been tremendous for Microsoft. And that’s what Facebook got with Instagram.
