If Meta or Google disappared overnight, it would be, at worst, a minor annoyance for most of the world. Despite the fact that both companies are advertising behemoths, marketing departments everywhere would celebrate their end.
I'll grant you Meta, but losing Google in that way would be highly disruptive because so many people have their primary email account on it.
You’d be pretty stuck. I guess SMS might work, but it wouldn’t for most businesses (they use the WhatsApp business functionality, there is no SMS thing backing it).
Most people don’t even use text anymore. China has it’s own Apps, but everyone else uses WhatsApp exclusively at this point.
The only reason WhatsApp is so popular, is because so many people are on it, but you have all you need (their phone number) to contact them elsewhere anyway
People would just switch to the next IM platform. Most would forget they ever needed whatsapp 12 hours after a permanent whatsapp shutdown.
I mean, the only reason the majority of whatsapp users use whatsapp is the network effect.
Take that away and you think people would just give up trying to IM each other?
Hard disagree