Facebook has decided to buy WhatsApp for a staggering price of $19 billion worth of cash and stocks.
The founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company is purchasing the globally and massively used messaging app called WhatsApp for a staggering price of $19 billion. That, I think is the most expensive tech acquisition I have ever heard since I started blogging about technology. If I remember it right it was Google's purchase of Motorola was on the top one for $12 billion a couple of years ago. This one (WhatsApp), a software application for communication devices, is for $19 billion. That's a very large amount of money.
Facebook agreed to pay WhatsApp $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in form of Facebook stocks and another $3 billion worth of restricted shares which is to be paid to WhatsApp founders and its employees for a period of four years. Mark made it clear that even though employees from the popular app will be joining their Facebook team, WhatsApp will still operate separately just like Instagram now which is also owned by Facebook.
According to statistics, WhatsApp have a user base of around 450 million active users monthly and currently at the speed of getting new registers of around 1 million per day. A report on Pocket-Lint says that if in any case, also part of the deal, the buy out would not go through or succeed, Facebook would have to pay WhatsApp a breakup fee of $1 billion in cash. This messaging app is currently available in all well known mobile OSs such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry.
