There are two ways of taking out your competition: offer a similar, yet superior and/or cheaper product than your opponent. Or simply buy the entire rival business and start offering its service as your own. The latter happened yesterday when Mark Zuckerberg announcd that Facebook is about to buy Instagram for $1 billion.

The news comes less than a week after Instagram launched for Andriod users, clocking a million downloads in the first day alone.

Interestingly, it also comes eight years after one of the Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom, turned down Mark Zuckerberg’s offer to join the Facebook team in 2004 – before it shot to success. They first met after Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley in San Fransisco, near to where Systrom went to university at Stanford, he said in a 2011 interview with Fast Company:

When I met Adam and Mark, they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re working on some photo stuff too, why don’t you come talk to us about Facebook?’ Unfortunately, I decided I wanted to stay in school, and that’s one of those decisions that I look back at – I would’ve loved to have been part of Facebook’s growth over the years.

And how will Mark pay over that cool billion to the Instagram founders? According to Zuckerberg, they’ll pay in cash and with Facebook stock, after the social network will complete its initial public offering of stock next month.

[Source: Daily Mail]