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> 500M users paying $500M dollars There's no way they actually earned $500M/year. Even if Whatsapp had 100 employees making $200k/year on average, that's $20M
by cherryteastain 1y ago
> 500M users paying $500M dollars
There's no way they actually earned $500M/year. Even if Whatsapp had 100 employees making $200k/year on average, that's $20M on salaries. Add an another very generous $80M on infra/admin etc costs and they'd have been making $400M profit. With that much profit achieved within such a short period, in the QE funny money era they could have IPO'd at $50-100 billion easily.
- RestlessMind 1y agoCorrect. I used Android phones back then and so did all my family members and most of my friends. No one I knew paid a dime for Whatsapp.
- conradfr 1y agoI remember that the grace period was extended one or two times when it was time to pay, and then Facebook bought it.
- prmoustache 1y agoI remember people being angered and threatening to leave if they had to pay that 1$/€ fee per year. And now here we are with ads.
- chgs 1y agoThe average person would rather view 100 adverts than pay 1 cent to get rid of them. We see it time and again. The average company would rather charge that 1 cent and still show adverts. We see that time and again.
- account42 1y agoDo we see that? What I see again and again is companies pretending to make that offer and then adding ads anyway. You can only fool people so often.
- nicoburns 1y agoThey only had 55 employees when facebook bought them. I suspect their infrastructure costs were much less than you've suggested too. There's a reason whatsapp only supported one device: they didn't store messages after they were delivered.