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What? WhatsApp was $1/yr before Facebook bought it, which is hardly a "fortune." A lifetime of WhatsApp would have cost you less than one month's internet bil

• skinnymuch 8y ago
  No it wasn’t. Almost no one paid that amount. And this isn’t about Whatsapp before FB. It is about before Whatsapp existing at all.
  • username223 8y ago
    Did most people pay more than $1/yr plus data rates? My point was that WhatsApp was apparently a legitimate, independent business where people paid a small fee for the equivalent of international SMS.
    • skinnymuch 7y ago
      But no one was happy with that. So that was never how it was going to stay. The people making Whatsapp were mostly much happier getting millions and billions for the app. There’s no point in talking about Whatsapp as a tiny company charging $1 to a small percent of its user base. No one had any intention of keeping it that way. I also don’t think billionaires like the founders saying they regret stuff after they’ve become billionaires from Whatsapp’s sale should count as a counter argument. I doubt they’d be fine giving back their billions for a few million a year salary while being worried about what their future will hold.