No, Google Isn't Buying WhatsApp
An executive at WhatsApp shot down a rumor going around Monday that Google was in talks to buy the company for $1 billion.The report,in Digital Trends,cited an inside source who said that Google has been in talks to buy the hugely popular messaging app for the past few weeks and the current offer is said to be "close to" $1 billion.
However, Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp’s business development head, told that the supposed acquisition isn't happening. Arora could not be reached for further comment despite multiple requests.The Google rumor comes after a report surfaced in December charging Facebook was rumoured to be interested in buying WhatsApp, though no price was mentioned. If the $1 billion figure is correct, it would put WhatsApp in the same ballpark as Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook last year.
Facebook is still being threatened by messaging apps, so it makes sense for it to acquire WhatsApp or one of its competitors (like Kik or SnapChat). The social network already acquired messaging app Beluga a few years ago, but it looks like that deal was mostly for engineers to build out Facebook’s own messaging platform.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook is eyeing WhatsApp as well just to snap up its users (said to be over 100 million) and fast growth.After all, Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram before it even had a revenue model. On paper, at least, WhatsApp seems far more valuable.
WhatsApp is the most popular of a new crop of mobile messaging apps that some say pose a threat to bigger companies like Facebook and Google.
The app, which lets users send messages for free across smartphone platforms, launched in 2009 and has tens of millions of users. It's currently the No. 1 app in Apple's App Store in dozens of countries, according to data from AppAnnie, and it has been downloaded more than 100 million times on Google Play.