Now, four of the most downloaded apps of the decade are owned by Facebook.
Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are now owned by none other than Facebook.
Between 2010 and2019, the most downloaded apps were Facebook’s main app, followed by the company’s own Messenger app. WhatsApp came third, and Instagram fourth. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1bn (£760m) and Whatsapp in 2014 for $19bn. All these purchases only tell us how much power and control Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has.
Despite of having countless court controversies like data privacy scandals and anti-market practices, Facebook and its apps somehow managed to dominate as the most downloaded apps of the decade. With its main app, i.e. Facebook, along with Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram has now grabbed the top four spots in the top 10 apps downloaded in the decade of 2010-2019.
According to data analytics platform App ran by Annie, Facebook came out on top in dominating the mobile space representing the four most downloaded apps of the decade (the 2010-2019).
“It is not ok,” said Taha Yasseri, who is a senior research fellow in computation science at the Oxford Internet Institute.
“One company owning four of the most popular social networking and communication apps, at best, can be described as a data monopoly.”
“Mr Yasseri added: “Combined, the data from multiple platforms can lead to an extremely high level of precision in modeling our traits and behaviours. This amount of power should be regulated.” The UK “should tackle dominance of online giants,” the UK’s competition regulator said on Wednesday.
While Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), on the other hand, raised concerns that people on these platforms might lose the control over their data.
Snapchat and Skype, on the other hand, came in at 5th and 6th, followed by TikTok and UC Browser, which is owned by China’s Alibaba and YouTube, came at 9th and Twitter was in 10th place.
Later on, we came to know that eight of the top 10 apps are being owned by US corporations, while only two of them are owned by Chinese companies/firms.
