Google Says It Never Offered To Buy WhatsApp For Billions Of Dollars
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There have been multiple reports that Google offered to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion and that it was willing to outbid Facebook's $19 billion offer. But Google Vice President Sundar Pichai says neither of those things are true.
<p class="p2">"WhatsApp was definitely an exciting product," Pichai said at World Mobile Congress this week in Barcelona. The Telegraph's Matt Warman first reported the quote. "We never made an offer to acquire them. Press reports to the contrary are simply untrue."
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">It's not clear what Pichai's definition of an "acquisition offer" is. He may mean no formal offer was ever given, or he may mean the talks never happened. Pichai says the two companies had been communicating, but not about an acquisition.</span>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Here's what another Google executive, Eric Schmidt, had to say about the Google-WhatsApp buyout rumors.</span>
<b>See Also:</b>
<ul><li>WhatsApp Isn't Unbeatable — During Its Weekend Outage LINE Rocketed Past It In Major Markets</li><li>GOOGLE EXEC: The Most Important Talk A Parent Can Have With A Child Isn't About 'Birds And Bees'</li><li>Eric Schmidt Was Just Asked If Google Bid $10 Billion For WhatsApp — Here's His Response</li></ul></group><group id="EC0778B2-11F0-47C8-B8F3-51777BB78C60" type="seoLabels"><seoLabels></seoLabels></