Business

Instagram’s insta-surprise

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is getting an assist, of sorts, from the most unlikely place in its $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing app Instagram — Google, The Post has learned.

While Google’s own social networking business would be hurt by the Facebook-Instagram deal — and in another time its CEO Larry Page would have filed a complaint with Washington regulators — the search giant is forced to stay quiet because it is in the middle of its own Federal Trade Commission probe.

“Regulators are not asking enough questions,” said a source close to the situation who is not a Facebook supporter.

“There’s no natural complainants” of any size, the source said.

The Washington insider said because Google is forced to stay on the sidelines, there is a 50 percent chance that regulators in the next two weeks will clear the Facebook-Instagram deal.

The FTC within 30 days of getting a merger request either clears it or gives it a second review. Facebook-Instagram is in the middle of that 30-day period.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the FTC would take months to approve the deal.

However, sources with direct knowledge said regulators have yet to make that decision. To be sure, there is a compelling enough argument for the FTC to conduct a broader investigation, the source said.

For example, Instagram says it is just photo sharing on smart phones — but because its 50 million users can also upload to Facebook and its rivals, it is really a social-networking site, the source noted.

Facebook, with nearly 500 million users, has a 60 percent social-network market share, and the general rule for regulators is that a business cannot make an acquisition that gives it better than a combined 40 percent share.

Instagram has just released its app for Google’s Android phones. Google’s struggling social network site is called Google +.

Facebook this week said it expected the Instagram acquisition to close in the second quarter, soon after its record-breaking $13 billion IPO.

An FTC spokesman declined comment.