Facebook's proposed purchase of Instagram has been cleared by the FTC, paving the way for the deal to close nearly five months after the initial announcement. This news comes a little over a week after the UK's Office of Fair Trading gave similar approval to the deal. The FTC passed the deal unanimously in a five-to-zero vote, saying that "the deal may now proceed as proposed." As Facebook has gone public since the purchase was first announced, the value of the deal is actually a good bit lower than the original estimated purchase price of $1 billion — the deal is for $300 million in cash, plus 22,999,412 shares of Facebook common stock. As of today, the whole deal is valued at $747.1 million.

There's no word on when exactly this all might be finalized, but we'd expect the FTC's approval will move things along pretty quickly. While there's a good chance the deal may be done soon, we might be waiting just a bit to see the first official release following the completion of Facebook's purchase — Instagram just rolled out a brand new version of the app last week.

Update: We reached out to Facebook for comment, and a spokesperson had this to say: "We are pleased that the Federal Trade Commission has cleared the transaction after its careful and thorough review." It doesn't tell us much of anything as to whether there are any more hurdles, but it further reinforces that the FTC won't have any other involvement in the deal.