Facebook Officially Announces Merger of Messaging Service Infrastructure ⇥ engadget.com

As rumoured earlier this year, Facebook will combine the chat infrastructure for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Nicole Lee, Engadget:

This interoperability is just one of many features of the new Messenger. All messages will also be end-to-end encrypted, which is part of Facebook’s recent privacy-focused mantra. Sharma said that the inter-app messaging will work similar to how people make calls on phones today. You don’t need to know if your friend is on Verizon or T-Mobile, you can just call them. It’ll be the same on any of Facebook’s messaging services — just say you’ll want to talk to your friend, and that message will get to him or her on whatever service they use.

How much of this is driven by pained users who just wish so bad that they could message a WhatsApp friend without leaving Instagram, and how much is this driven by a fear that Facebook could be required by antitrust regulators to split itself apart?