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Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for 16 Billion

posted by Dopefish on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-will-this-darn-bubble-pop-already? dept.

lubricus writes "Facebook announced plans to acquire WhatsApp for four billion cash, plus 12 billion in Facebook shares.

Additionally, WhatsApp employees and founders will receive three billion in restricted stock which will vest in four years. Facebook also agreed to a one billion dollar break up fee.

WhatsApp says they have message volume which approaches the global SMS volume, and hope to have one billion users. Even at those figures, Facebook is paying $16 per user.

I'm guessing WhatsApp will send Snapchat developers a cake."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Konomi on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:11AM

    by Konomi (189) on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:11AM (#3342)

    I'm waiting for facebook to buy the entire Internet, one day I'll get a knock on my door and they'll want to buy my computers, stack of hard drives and poorly written bash scripts.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Non Sequor on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:23AM

    by Non Sequor (1005) on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:23AM (#3351) Journal

    You just need a dumb trademark and you'll get an offer of at least $1b. Here are some you could use

    namepile
    BlogTaco
    StackOPics
    Diddler
    BookBook (you may get the offer as part of the settlement in your trademark violation suit for this one)

    --
    Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by inasity_rules on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:29PM

    by inasity_rules (147) on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:29PM (#3380)

    It is more subtly evil than that. Facebook don't want to "buy" the internet. They want to become the internet. Buying random companies is just a small part of the long term goal.

    --
    I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.

  • (Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:52PM

    by SuggestiveLanguage (1313) on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:52PM (#3428)

    So, like every other sufficiently wealthy service provider, Facebook wants to be what AOL: Walled garden, nonstop in-your-face advertising, dumbed-down, intrusive interfaces, poor security, and ever-escalating rent seeking by charging a premium for services provided elsewhere for low or no cost.