On April 10, Facebook acquired the San Francisco-based startup for a whopping $1 billion. At the time of the acquisition, Instagram’s iOS app has been downloaded over 30 million times. The Android app, which was recently released, saw over 5 million downloads in six days.

One of the interesting tidbits of the acquisition is that a week before Facebook bought Instagram, the startup was valued at $500 million. So in a week’s time, the value of Instagram apparently doubled.

The $1 billion price tag has definitely raised some eyebrows, and for good reason: The company is only 17 months old and has a measly 13 employees. They also haven’t generated any revenue whatsoever. Some people even compared Instagram’s worth to the New York Times, noting that the 116-year-old national newspaper company is worth less than a 17-month-old photo app. It’s also worth noting that, in the same year, Kodak filed for bankruptcy while Instagram gets bought for $1 billion; the times they are a changin’.

Large Silicon Valley acquisitions aren’t uncommon, but it is indeed strange for such a small company to be offered ten figures. Then again, we kind of knew what Facebook was really acquiring: Instagram users — 30 million of them. The extremely large user base is what Facebook really wants (and I suppose the resources and features of the Instagram app don’t hurt either).

In any case, the Facebook acquisition has not stopped the influx of new Instagram users, even though many current users are jumping ship now that the social-networking giant has a hold on the app. The iOS version hit the number one spot in the iTunes App Store for the first time ever this week.

It’ll be interesting to see what Facebook does with the photo app. Will they leave it as is? Will they use the visual-filter features on their own photo-sharing web interface? Will they completely shut it down like they did with Gowalla (probably not)? We’ll have to wait and see.

The post Instagram goes from $0 to $1 billion in 17 months first appeared on Techerator.

From the press release:

“The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.”

One of the biggest aspects that attracted Google to Motorola was the bevy of patents that they owned – all 17,000 of them. Larry Page, CEO of Google says that this “will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”

Wonder what other handset manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson, and LG are thinking about all of this? Surprisingly, all of them approve of the acquisition and welcome it with open arms. Then again, this whole thing is about protecting the Android platform and it does not negatively affect the ecosystem for other manufacturers.

The post Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Billion first appeared on Techerator.