I believe that it was back in February of this year when Facebook (News - Alert) began its acquisition of WhatsApp. The deal was for $19 billion, broken down into $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares and $3 billion in restricted stock that would be granted to WhatsApp’s founders and employees over a four year period. This represents the largest acquisition yet for Facebook in its 10 year history, and will give it a strong foothold that it has been looking for in the mobile messaging market.

Today, the European Commission, which is Europe’s competition authority, has authorized the proposed acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook under the E.U. Merger Regulation. The purpose of the European Commission is to assess mergers and acquisitions involving companies with a turnover above certain thresholds and to prevent concentrations that would significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

You may be wondering why it took the European Commission over seven months to unanimously approve the deal unconditionally. It seems that the commission’s focus was on whether this deal would limit European users’ access to Internet messaging services, which allow individuals to send messages through their smartphones. The Commission’s investigation was focused on the following three areas, consumer communications services, social networking services and online advertising services.

According to Reuters, WhatsApp is poised to become a potentially powerful rival to companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telecom Italia (News - Alert) with its plan to add free voice-call services for its 450 million customers later this year. This would give the telecom companies a lot of competition which warranted close scrutiny. In recent years WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber have won over telecoms operators' customers with a free text messaging option. This poses a serious threat to the sector's revenues from this business.

In a statement, Joaquín Almunia, the European antitrust chief, explained, “We have come to the conclusion that it would not hamper competition in this dynamic and growing market. Consumers will continue to have a wide choice of consumer communications apps. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are not close competitors. There are a large number of alternative service providers, including other consumer communications apps, such as Line and WeChat. Consumer communications apps keep European citizens connected and are becoming increasingly popular. While Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are two of the most popular apps, most people use more than one communications app."

Now that both the U.S. and the E.U. have approved the deal, we may see it close by year’s end.