It was recently announced that Facebook had agreed to purchase WhatsApp for a whopping $16 billion
($12 billion in Facebook shares and $4 billion in cash), plus another
$3 billion in vested payments. The deal is huge, and quite an aggressive
move by Facebook. Then, the news came out that WhatsApp had actually
turned down a $10 billion offer from Google before agreeing to Facebook's purchase. But, the story doesn't end there.
A new report from The Information is
now saying that Google was willing to beat the $19 billion offer from
Facebook, even though Google apparently didn't really want to acquire
WhatsApp. According to the report, Google was mostly trying to keep
WhatsApp from being acquired by Facebook. Google CEO Larry Page also
tried to convince WhatsApp to stay independent, in order to keep it away
from Facebook.
In the end, Google apparently "did not seem excited" about
purchasing WhatsApp. So, even though Google was willing to pay more than
Facebook, maybe the lack of enthusiasm was what sold WhatsApp on
choosing Facebook to make WhatsApp employees very rich.
source: The Information via BGR
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