Facebook’s Instagram purchase finally complete, over 5 billion photos shared to date

It’s been a long time coming, but Facebook’s purchase of Instagram is finally a done deal — both companies just announced the finalized partnership on their respective blogs. Additionally, Instagram revealed that users have now shared over five billion photos. This finalized purchase comes a few weeks after the FTC closed its investigation into the deal, and less than a week since the state of California finished a “fairness hearing” on the proposed deal.

Due to the fact that Facebook’s stock has dropped since the deal was originally announced, the value of the purchase is below the $1 billion that was originally reported — we don’t know the final purchase price yet, but last week it was estimated to be about $750 million. This caps a big year for Instagram, which finally released an Android app and saw its userbase double in just four months.