
Rumor: Google negotiating $1 billion acquisition of WhatsApp - dll
http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/google-acquiring-whatsapp/
======
recuter
Sometimes the mind boggles how companies like Google or Apple with its
iMessages, who have all the ducks in a row, are so slow to capitalize on these
things.

WhatsApp and most clones are pretty terrible, it is used solely because of
network effects. But apparently two years is quick enough to reach escape
velocity and lock it in. They are likely to get that billion.

~~~
shawabawa3
Why exactly is WhatsApp terrible? I've been using it for about 6months and it
works perfectly. Low memory usage, low disk space usage, low cpu usage,
messages go through instantly and reliably. What more do you want in a
messaging app?

~~~
andor
There are some technical reasons, such as that the encryption is broken, the
protocol isn't open and they have everybody's address books. Also, you can
only use it from your phone. But (apart from the address book issue maybe)
most people don't care about that. Usability-wise I like it more than Google's
IM clients. Since I pay for the service, I trust them more than I trust
Google, which is an advertisement company after all.

I'd much prefer it if everybody used XMPP, but unfortunately that's not the
case.

~~~
omonra
As a user of the app, I don't care about any of them. As far as I see it -
it's perfect. For example - them having my addressbook means that I don't have
to set up any contacts. While I wish there was a desktop service, its lack is
just that - something I wish existed.

I think a more precise way to describe it is "I disagree with certain
technical solutions they chose".

~~~
delano
Your opinion might change after someone sends messages to your contacts as you
by spoofing your phone number (very easy).

~~~
chmars
It might be easy but is it common, i.e., is it a real world problem?

Friends complain about falling victim to Facebook scams all the time but I
have never heard a complaint about WhatsApp … I know that such an anecdote is
not of much use but WhatsApp seems at least not to have lost the trust of its
users so far.

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Mahn
That would make for a very nice middle finger to Facebook if they pull this
off (allegedly they attempted to acquire WhatsApp before)

But $1 billion? I'm not sure if that evaluation is entirely justified. It has
a pretty large user base, granted, but there's practically nothing that
warrants people will continue using it in the next 5 years.

~~~
rubyrescue
Outside of the US WhatsApp rules with an iron fist. Every non-tech person I
know uses it. I hear it dropped in casual conversation at the table next to me
in restaurants. It's got a public mindshare greater than Skype. And once all
your friends are on it, it's not so easy to switch.

~~~
JOfferijns
I can definitely confirm this, at least in The Netherlands literally everybody
uses Whatsapp and it has slowly become a verb - "I'll whatsapp you the
details!".

It's far from the best messaging app, but definitely the most popular (in
Europe).

~~~
soneca
In Brazil here, my girlfriend literally bought a new phone, a low-budget
android, just to talk with her best friends through Whatsapp.

~~~
bosky101
India too...( where whatsapp adoption spread virally from blackberry, symbian,
etc first and smartphones later)

i work on an im client[1], and my mom sent me a link about whatsapp :)

[1] to be fair, verbs.im is a gtalk/aol/yahoo multi-protocol client. infact,
one day we could wrap over whatsapp as well. not exactly re-building a new
graph but re-using your existing lists.

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rubyrescue
To take the code focus for a second, this would be a great win for Erlang in
that it would put a very high-profile Erlang powered app inside Google.

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justhw
Anybody think WhatsApp will still be here in a year or two?

~~~
Havoc
Definitely. Its a really powerful force in 3rd world countries. Here is ZA
they cornered the market completely.

Unless they screw it up themselves they aren't going to lose that head start.
Not with the kind of network effects at play here.

~~~
ubershmekel
ZA = South Africa?

~~~
atlbeer
Yes

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signa11
here is the erlang factory talk by one of the lead developers of whatsapp :
[http://www.erlang-
factory.com/conference/SFBay2012/speakers/...](http://www.erlang-
factory.com/conference/SFBay2012/speakers/RickReed)

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gjulianm
I don't think this should be on the front page. It's a rumor, citing
"sources". It's not credible, even less when they cite Google Babble as a
rumor. For those who don't know, Babble was a fake made by a spanish forum
called Forocoches [1] [2]

[1] [http://www.adslzone.net/article11194-google-babble-rumor-
ori...](http://www.adslzone.net/article11194-google-babble-rumor-originado-en-
forocoches-traspasa-fronteras.html) (spanish) [2]
[http://www.androidauthority.com/leaked-google-babble-
screens...](http://www.androidauthority.com/leaked-google-babble-screenshots-
fake-app-not-called-babble-source-says-176622/)

------
applecore
How would they reconcile a Google acquisition with why they don’t sell ads?

[http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/06/why-we-dont-
sell-...](http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/06/why-we-dont-sell-ads/)

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mtgx
Well if they can't buy whatsapp because they are asking for too much, they
should buy LINE or whoever is next in line (no pun intended) with the biggest
network of users, and is still growing fast. The strategy of buying one of
these companies out to catch-up to iMessage in user base (not counting Gtalk
users) is a sound one.

But whoever it's going to be and whatever Google is going to use, can we get
OTR encryption enabled by default in there? Google doesn't need to have access
to people's private conversations after all - right?

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maguay
Congrats Google: you're trying to buy an app as its going down. Practically
everyone in Asia has switched to Line, and WhatsApp is definitely not what it
was last year.

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intopieces
Would this acquisition just serve to take it out of the market? Google already
has a text-messaging (a better one) with Google Voice. I ditched my $20/month
texting plan a few months back and have been quite pleased, especially with my
ability to open my texts in a browser and use a physical keyboard.

Granted, the privacy is completely nonexistant; my texts might as well be on
my facebook wall. But that doesn't really bother me.

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pmelendez
This scary me a little bit. Most of my friends have Whatsapp across different
platforms and it would be a shame to find out that Google would shutdown the
project in favor of GTalk

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pasbesoin
These valuations are just absurd. Shades of a decade ago.

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QuantumDoja
I really thought Skype would snap this one up.

~~~
Mahn
You mean Microsoft? Skype belongs to them for quite some time now.

Edit: Not sure why the downvote, Skype does belong to Microsoft, and for Skype
to go after WhatsApp now would mean Microsoft has to actively pursue it, which
given their track record of acquisitions seems a bit unlikely as opposed to
Skype independently doing acquisitions.

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badclient
Samsung is insane for not acquiring WhatsApp.

~~~
notatoad
i don't see how it makes any sense for samsung. they're a hardware company,
and the only way an app drives hardware sales is if it is exclusive. if you
make whatsapp exclusive to samsung devices, you take away all of its value.

~~~
badclient
They don't have to make it exclusive to Samsung but they can build it into
their version of Android.

It gives them a leg up to iMessage since iMessage is apple-only.

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kevinwdavid
google would buy <http://mightytext.net/> \- iMessage for android founders by
ex-googlers.

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skrebbel
It makes sense, but would be horrible for consumers. Google reading every
instant message i send? Brr, please not.

~~~
LockeWatts
You think your messages aren't already being read? That seems a bit naive.

