Google to buy Whatsapp?

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Aladdin

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Previous rumours claimed that Facebook was also negotiating to buy the popular cross-platform mobile messaging app, emphasising that several major businesses are keen to improve how that handle instant messages. None, however, has spoken publicly about any potential deal.
WhatsApp has, according to some studies, played a direct part in declining SMS growth, and is reported to earn $100m a year. It processes up to 18billion messages per day and is currently available in 100 countries on 750 mobile networks. It is routinely among the top apps in each of those countries.
According to DigitalTrends.com, negotiations have been continuing for more than a month, with WhatsApp reportedly “playing hardball” to secure a better price.
Facebook’s $1billion purchase of photosharing service Instagram last year has bolstered the confidence of companies aiming to sell to larger Silicon Valley firms, and with BlackBerry enhancing its own popular BBM messenger, the focus has now fallen on applications that make communication easier.
Google has also reportedly been working on a new, unified messaging service to be called Babel, but Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal told GigaOM last year that the company has “done an incredibly poor job of servicing our users here”. DigitalTrends claimed that “messaging is a huge, gaping hole in Google’s mobile strategy”.
A number of messaging apps such as Line and WeChat have found rapid popularity, but WhatsApp remains one of the most popular. It charges a yearly, nominal fee to keep the service free of advertising, and also has deals with some mobile networks for international messages.


Source - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9979953/Google-to-buy-WhatsApp-for-1bn.html
 
I hope it doesn't happen. Google will end up shutting it down in a few years as they kill all good services.. Either that or they'll end up combining it with gtalk to make an iMessage competitor. Sad days..
 
ChatOn is similar to WhatsApp and it's not limited for Samsung devices. It's a cross platform messaging app which can be used on BB, iOS, bada, Windows Mobile and Android. Apprantly ChatOn has a web interface too.
 
Was inevitable i guess. Imagine what a company like Google or Facebook could gleam from all the database that Whatsapp has with their advanced analytics and relationship mapping algorithms ! It would be definitely tingling them to look at the unique database Whatsapp has
 
Konquerror said:
ChatOn is similar to WhatsApp and it's not limited for Samsung devices. It's a cross platform messaging app which can be used on BB, iOS, bada, Windows Mobile and Android. Apprantly ChatOn has a web interface too.
Click to expand...


ChatOn is mostly similar to hookup from mmx
 
An exec 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 AllThingsD 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 rumoredto 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.
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.

http://mashable.com/2013/04/09/google-isnt-buying-whatsapp/
 
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