I'm not the other person, but in my view it's impossible to evaluate the full impact of an acquisition. What you need to do is envision futures where the acquisition does and doesn't take place. And then you have to be satisfied that in both futures, the market and customers suffer no injury. And then you have to justify that decision 10 years later to people who have the benefit of hindsight.
It's in vogue to criticise the FTC approval of the Instagram merger, for instance. The critics almost take it for granted that Instagram was going to grow by 100x over the next decade no matter what Facebook did. And that the FTC should have known this very obvious fact and blocked the merger.
And then this criticism-with-hindsight is used to criticise all past and future tech acquisitions.
It's in vogue to criticise the FTC approval of the Instagram merger, for instance. The critics almost take it for granted that Instagram was going to grow by 100x over the next decade no matter what Facebook did. And that the FTC should have known this very obvious fact and blocked the merger.
And then this criticism-with-hindsight is used to criticise all past and future tech acquisitions.