Facebook Inc. has received the stamp of approval from the European Union Competition Office for the US$19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp. The deal was approved by Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, without seeking any concessions from the two companies.

In a statement earlier today, Almunia said he did not see Facebook and WhatsApp as direct competitors. The two companies have a lot of overlap in terms of users, and people use more than one messaging service to keep in contact with friends and family.

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Both companies are based in California, with WhatsApp in Mountain View and Facebook in Menlo Park. Facebook said they were pleased to hear the EU had accepted the deal without any concessions, and look forward to the final closure of the deal.

Since Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp on February 19, 2014, it has taken the company half a year to get approval from all the major competition offices. In that time, WhatsApp has grown its user base by another 100 million. 

WhatsApp currently has 600 million active monthly users, making it the most popular messaging app globally, followed by Tencent Holdings' WeChat, with just shy of 450 million users. Facebook has 1.1 billion users on their social network, but not all of them use their built-in messaging service.

The $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp is the largest in Facebook's history, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it won't be the last. In an interview on the subject of large-scale acquisitions, Zuckerberg said he would not be afraid of putting down more money to diversify the company.

Some of the diversification this year includes a US$2 billion acquisition of Oculus, the company working on a virtual reality headset. Lots of people are interested to see what Facebook will do with Oculus and WhatsApp, especially when it comes to privacy and advertising.

If Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp is anything like Instagram, we doubt there will be any immediate changes. Facebook has only managed to add some sponsored content on Instagram in two years of ownership, and it continues to be a sore spot on Facebook's annual revenue.

TagsWhatsApp acquisition, European Union, WhatsApp