WhatsApp Denies Google Acquisition Rumours

Neeraj Arora, the head of business development at the popular cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp, has denied rumours his company is about to be acquired by Google.

On Sunday, “anonymous sources” hinted the search giant was offering as much as $1 billion (£653m) for the platform. The same reports claimed that WhatsApp was acting reluctantly in order to drive up the price.

A day at the mill

On Sunday, DigitalTrends reported that WhatsApp, the number one paid app on iTunes, was in the midst of talks with Google. This was consistent with the earlier rumours that Google was working on its own messaging service codenamed “Babel”, but wasn’t ready to put in effort to successfully market it.

However, Arora told AllThingsD that WhatsApp had entered no negotiations with Google. He didn’t elaborate on the topic.

In December, a similar rumour was doing the rounds, with Facebook as an apparent buyer.

WhatsApp carried a record 18 billion messages on last New Years’ Eve, and is believed to have played a crucial role in the decline of SMS messaging. It is believed that the increased use of social messaging apps had cost mobile operators $13.9 billion (£8.8bn) in lost revenues in 2011.

In March, CEO of the company Jan Koum revealed that the app, which has users in 100 countries around the world, would eventually switch to a yearly subscription model, instead of a one-off £0.69 payment.

Are you a Google expert? Take our quiz!

Max Smolaks

Max 'Beast from the East' Smolaks covers open source, public sector, startups and technology of the future at TechWeekEurope. If you find him looking lost on the streets of London, feed him coffee and sugar.

Recent Posts

Northvolt Files For Bankruptcy Protection In US

Northvolt files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, and CEO and co-founder…

14 mins ago

UK’s CMA Readies Cloud Sector “Behavioural” Remedies – Report

Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector

15 hours ago

Former Policy Boss At X Nick Pickles, Joins Sam Altman Venture

Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…

18 hours ago

Bitcoin Rises Above $96,000 Amid Trump Optimism

Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…

19 hours ago

FTX Co-Founder Gary Wang Spared Prison

Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…

20 hours ago