Zuckerberg aiming to integrate Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly planning on integrating Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp with an underlying messaging infrastructure that would include end-to-end-encryption, said the New York Times on Friday.

Nevertheless, the three services will still be separate apps the report said.

Mr Zuckerberg is reportedly pushing the integration plan to make the apps more useful and increase the amount of time people spend on them.

"We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private," said Facebook in a statement.

According to CNBC, an integration of this size could raise questions of antitrust action. The company’s family of apps sees over 2.5bn users each month and dominates mobile traffic.

The company said it’s still at early stages but expects the integration to be complete by the end of 2019 or early 2020.