Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp gets European Commission approval
For the most part, everyone has been acting as though Facebook already owns WhatsApp. We've even been caught with that slip up. But, the purchase hasn't actually been finalized yet, so Facebook does not yet own WhatsApp. (The same goes for Lenovo buying Motorola from Google, which some of you in the comment section seem to be confused about.) But, Facebook has crossed another hurdle today.
The European Commission regulators gave its stamp of approval to Facebook's purchase plans. The deal wasn't expected to run into any issues, and it didn't. The EC was convinced that the mobile messaging space is in no danger of running into monopoly situations. The approval cited the existence of Line, Viber, iMessage, Telegram, WeChat, and Google Hangouts as competitors, and that users tend to use more than one app to communicate with others. The approval even notes that "launching a new app is fairly easy and does not require significant time and investment."
There are still a couple more regulatory bodies that have to approve the deal before it is finalized. Although, there aren't expected to be any major hold-ups in the process, but a $19 billion deal is bound to take a bit of time to pass through the various approval processes.
source: Europa via The Next Web
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