Facebook will be shelling out a whopping $19 billion to buy the mobile messaging wonder service WhatsApp Inc., thanks to the EU giving them the thumbs up clearance to purchase the company.
This is a history busting merger and the largest in Facebook’s acquisitions. Cleared by the US antitrust big shots, this joining will boost the foundation of the mobile messaging market for the world’s biggest social networking company. With both the EU and the US antitrust bodies giving Facebook the greenlight, there’s nothing stopping them from dominating the market. Analysts and antitrust say that there won’t be a domination but that consumers will still have alternatives to other companies to do messaging.
This is a watershed test for this kind of merger as experts, analysts, and industry pros will watch to see how people use both services. The public can be quite innovative on their own and may come up with ways to use both Facebook and WhatsApp that no one had foreseen leading to greater interest. There was resistance to the merger from Europe’s telecom operators but resistance was bound to happen. It’s because the telecom companies are up against the wall from pressure from these big companies like Skype, Netflix, WhatsApp and others who use telecom infrastructure to provide the same type of services but don’t have to pay the same taxes or fall under similar regulation.
This merger scared many companies around the world but the antitrust bodies did a thorough look into it and gave it the go ahead. People would argue that no one can turn Facebook down anyway as that would affect stocks and other commerce. Since there was no major battle and public uproar it was inevitable that the regulators wouldn’t stand in the way. Basically, Facebook is so huge now that if it makes money, everyone makes money. They have an estimated 1.3 billion users and growing and are pushing for another 4.4 billion people worldwide to get online. WhatsApp already has 600 million users and will definitely benefit from exposure via Facebook.
Regulators will be watching from here on out to see if their antitrust concerns are warranted or not. Facebook and WhatsApp will be on their toes to behave themselves and of course this merger will call for creating new jobs especially in monitoring an support.