Facebook got the green light from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to go ahead with its planned purchase of the online photo sharing service Instagram. The purchase was approved in a unanimous vote.
FTC clears Facebook’s $737 million Instagram purchase
“The Federal Trade Commission has closed its nonpublic investigation of Facebook’s proposed acquisition of Instagram, Inc., without taking any action,” the Federal agency said in a statement. “Accordingly, the deal may now proceed as proposed.”
The deal was estimated at about US$1 billion when it was first announced in April as a combination of $300 million and 22,999,412 common shares of Facebook stock. Now that Facebook’s stock value is lower, however, the package is worth about $737 million.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in April “This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.”
Even though Instagram will be part of Facebook, the service will still be open to users that aren’t subscribing to Facebook’s social networking service. Instagram will continue to allow sharing content with other social networking services, too.
“The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love,” said Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom.