Rumor: Google negotiating $1 billion acquisition of WhatsApp | Hacker News Reader

Rumor: Google negotiating $1 billion acquisition of WhatsApp

digitaltrends.com

61 pointsdll63 comments

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.

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?

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.

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".

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

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.

Look - I get the security implications.

But I (personally) consider the probability of it happening x potential damage to be insignificant when compared with convenience offered.

WhatsApp is AFAIK based on XMPP.

Anyway, the protocol in use isn't important from a user perspective. Using XMPP or being 'open' isn't relevant to users, ease of use and network effects are.

Skype is another example IMHO.

The idea behind "being open" and "using XMPP" is to make network effects irrelevant: XMPP federation allows you to talk to anybody also using XMPP, regardless of their service provider -- imagine messaging Facebook Messenger users seamlessly via WhatsApp. Just like Email works already. That's the point of XMPP. And because XMPP is extensible, providers could still compete on features without locking their users in. Wouldn't that be great?

Unfortunately, there's a strong business incentive for user lock-in. Imagine Email were created today instead of 40 years ago. We'd have a myriad of startups trying to make a buck from incompatible services. "Our new customer uses Exchange, does anybody have an Exchange account so I can email him?" As long as companies are trying to make products out of the social need to communicate, and thereby fight for the triviality of who gets to route the messages, there won't be much innovation on top of these services.

"low cpu usage" This is not true on all the platforms. For instance, in my experience I found it that blackberry's and android's versions are quite good. But iOS version (on a 3G) and Windows Phone 8 version are very cpu demanding which result in draining the battery pretty quickly.

WPH8 is the worse, although it is probably because a limitation of the OS (they had to had the audio sdk in order to make notifications work).

A desktop version as well, so I can use a single platform for all my messaging.

Since their latest big update, the app on Android is quite good. They do, however, have a horrible security track record and I'm not sure what the current state of their authentication system is.

You should try Talk.to - http://talk.to

Disclaimer: I am the lead dev for the android product.

The line between being helping and selling is ambiguous. My hunch is that you're being downvoted because recuter didn't state a specific need, just that "most clones are pretty terrible".

I was trying to say that we are trying not to be terrible :)

PS: I couldn't give a rats ass about the votes.

Why should I try Talk.to?

Your website does not speak for itself IMHO …

Classy

Relentless.

While they are terrible in so many ways - it just works. Google Talk just plain doesn't work with the latency and read notifciations.

I manage an large piece of software with a GUI that runs on a locked down Linux workstation. WhatsApp is how I get "screenshots" of problems.

Its not just the network effects but direct access to phone numbers and contact book cross platform. so think of it like network*network.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

Pretty fascinating reading the comments here about how big WhatsApp is outside of the US. I've never encountered anybody using it here, never would have guessed it's so popular elsewhere that it's been turned into a verb.

I think this is a great example of why you should never be afraid to try and reinvent something. Even a concept as simple as messaging apparently still had a (potential) billion dollar opportunity.

In Europe it rules with an iron fist. Plenty of massive competitors elsewhere, especially with Asia and WeChat (Weixin - China), Line, Kakao...

I use it to regularly connect with my good friend who's in Hong Kong; He was the one who first used it and got me to download it.

"Line" is doing very well in places as well.

Anecdote: Nobody I know uses it. I never hear it talked about at nearby tables.

If they're genuinely doing $100M revenue a year, it's not far off: you'd assume that they could grow a bit more, and maybe raise subs a little bit, and suddenly they're a $0.5B/yr company, without having done much work.

I would be amazed if they're doing $100M/yr but who knows.

It probably isn't just like Instagram wasn't but companies like WhatsApp like to play hard ball and negotiate higher bids because they know they're in demand and Google would rather overpay to gain an advantage then starting from scratch. Google talk isn't used much!

The number of people who use whatsapp is very high even in my not so techie circle of acquaintances in a developing country. Not to mention it has direct access to all the phone books of every user along with their very real name and other info. This is more of an asset that cannot be converted into money directly (or indirectly legally at least)

What's App is huge in India. The standard term here is "Whatsapp me". I almost stopped using sms & almost entirely use whatsapp. Simple and clutter free.

One thing that worries me with Google's purchase is the ads. Google will want to introduce while I would prefer to pay the annual fee and keep it ad free. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

I guess it's more useful to more people around the world than Instagram. So there's one benchmark :)

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.

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

At least here in Bolivia, literally every single person I've talked to that owns a smartphone uses WhatsApp to communicate.

Not even Facebook messenger, but WhatsApp specifically. It _completely_ obliterated BBPin when Blackberry was more in use, but since Android picked up a lot of marketshare here with Samsung's Galaxy line it's dropped out of the radar.

WhatsApp just like Instagram is too valuable as a brand. I expect that WhatsApp will be managed very much like YouTube in that it will remain independent and will be slowly integrated in the Google ecosystem over time so that people recognize it as a Google service.

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.

ZA = South Africa?

Yes

If google acquires them, they won't be there as WhatsApp anymore. Probably a better integration of gtalk is to be expected 'soon'.

While they own the market - not sure they can get people to actually pay for the product. Not sure they can afford to give it away free.

One year free, then 1 usd a year and promise of no ads: they are here to make a healthy revenue on a great messaging solution.

It's brilliantly done (-some security issues) and I happily pay a dollar a year for it.

I have yet to pay, atleast two if not three years in.

here is the erlang factory talk by one of the lead developers of whatsapp : http://www.erlang-factory.com/conference/SFBay2012/speakers/...

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... (spanish) [2] http://www.androidauthority.com/leaked-google-babble-screens...

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-...

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?

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.

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.

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

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

I really thought Skype would snap this one up.

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.

Samsung is insane for not acquiring WhatsApp.

I'd rather it remained a cross Android/iOS app (the right strategy, too, here) than a "Samsung-only" app like ChatON, which "nobody" uses.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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