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WhatsApp confirms Google isn’t buying it
- mhaymo 14y agoObligatory calling out of blogspam and linking to the original article: http://allthingsd.com/20130408/whatsapp-were-not-selling-to-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20130408/whatsapp-were-not-selling-to-... It never really made sense to me that Google would buy WhatsApp. What do they have that Google can't build themselves? An established userbase, sure, but any messaging app included by default in Android will have users migrating in droves.
- morsch 14y agoDoesn't Google Talk qualify as the messaging app included by default? Not sure I see the droves of WhatsApp users migrating to that, sadly.
- trailfox 14y agoWhy would anyone want to use gtalk over whatsapp? Unlike GTalk whatsapp doesn't store and data mine my conversations for targeted advertising. Source: http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21864047 http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21864047 "We do not store your chat history on our servers. Chat messages are considered private and are only stored until they are delivered."
- jxi 14y agoUh.. you gonna back that up with some proof or reasoning? Or are you just trying to spread FUD? What's your gripe with data mining anyway, and you can always use OTR.
- micampe 14y agoSadly? Not for me. Here is one big reason I prefer services like WhatsApp (I don’t actually use WhatsApp itself): I do not want the presence reporting. I want to send a message to people and they read and respond whenever they want. I want people to message me and I read and respond whenever I want. I don’t want to deal with ping, hey, you are online why are you not responding. This is why half my Gtalk contacts are always “away” even if they are at the keyboard: presence status has become useless, let’s just get rid of it.
- derefr 14y agoTracking "presence" makes sense when the program implementing it is running on a computer sitting on a desk, and then you sometimes walk away from that desk. Presence makes almost no sense when the program implementing it resides on a phone, where any time someone sends you a message--even if the application isn't running--you'll know (because your pants just buzzed), and could very well react to it if you felt like it. You're always "present"; you're just sometimes purposefully non-responsive. ...now, on the other hand, "openness to being interrupted" status could be pretty useful. :)
- micampe 14y agoHalf my contacts are always away, and have been for years. I think what you want should be a setting in my machine (whether phone or computer): silence all notifications when I don’t want to be interrupted (I use iOS “Do Not Disturb” all the time).
- Uchikoma 14y agoVery enlightening thought for mobile.
- mhaymo 14y agoAs far as I can tell it's not available at all in the UK, I had no idea it was included by default on some phones.
- mandeepj 14y ago"What do they have that Google can't build themselves?" Your argument contradicts every acquisition\acquihires made by google so far
- niggler 14y agoIn your estimation, how frequently is venturebeat blogspam? Is it at the same level as forbes.com?
- mhaymo 14y agoI have no idea, I just noticed that this particular article added very little to the source. It's possible I'm misusing the term?
- niggler 14y agoSome sites like forbes.com are notorious for blogspam. I don't have too much familiarity, but all of the venturebeat posts that I have seen were indeed blogspam. I wanted to know if I was the only one who felt that :)
- somesay 14y agoActually, WhatsApp service that targets Android and iOS. And they made adding contacts super easy. No ICQ number, no XMPP handle, no username. iMessage is Apple-only, Google Talk has a slightly different concept and more complicated. any messaging app included by default in Android will have users migrating in droves Yeah, that's why Google+ replaced Facebook and everyone is using Google Talk. Nearly every browser comes with Google as search engine or homepage and it didn't worked.
- jahabrewer 14y agoI'm not familiar with WhatsApp, but from their front page blog article[1], it sounds like they could be at loggerheads with Google over privacy/advertising. You can't buy an ideologue. [1] http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/06/why-we-dont-sell-ads/ http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/06/why-we-dont-sell-...
- notatoad 14y agoYou can buy an ideologue, that's no problem. You can't buy a successful ideologue.
- mtgx 14y agoI know the Android app is free (at least in the first year). Is it also ad-free?
- trailfox 14y agoNo ads.
- shmerl 14y agoWhatsapp has several severe problems. Firstly it's proliferating non interoperable instant messaging networks. While it uses XMPP underneath, it modifies it in an incompatible fashion, and can't communicate with XMPP compliant clients and naturally it's not federated with any XMPP networks, so it reverses the point of XMPP completely, while using it. Secondly, that it was created to exploit people's laziness - i.e. it skips registration step (one time thing) presenting it as a "convenience feature", but it does it at the cost of sacrificing security (i.e. it offers no way to choose user ID and password, instead of that it uses hardcoded information derived from the phone hardware ID), obviously not letting the user know about this downside. So it's a wicked trick which is used to attract unaware users.
- conradfr 14y agoRegistration step is huge and annoying. I had to add my friends in ICQ, then MSN, then Facebook, then Skype, then Google+ (well no, not this one ...). I use Whatsapp once per month and I'm not even sure what it does or how it does it. I just know I can send group messages to everyone in my contact list who have it and it WORKS.
- shmerl 14y agoGoogle better buy it, and convert it into normal XMPP service. Otherwise this sickness will just grow more. >At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion. There is such thing - XMPP. Just create a reliable federated (and standard compliant!) service, and give people a decent client with audio/video XMPP/Jingle calling capabilities. Why their passion has to revolve around gutting security in the process of creating a non compliant walled IM abomination is really puzzling. > Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it. What about your identity being in the picture? Shouldn't they warn their users that they offer an insecure and identity leak / theft prone service?
- trailfox 14y agoI think the part you are missing and what Whatsapp's engineers are referring to is Google storing all your private conversations and data mining them for information to target you with ads. Whatsapp does not store your messages.
- shmerl 14y agoThat's fine that it doesn't. It has other severe issues, about which users aren't notified in Whatsapp PR talk.
- ajhai 14y agoWhatsapp does store your messages. Try uninstalling the app, clear the app cache and reinstall it. You will be provided with an option to restore your chat history. I think what they don't do (at least promise) is not mine the chat conversations.
- trailfox 14y agoCurious. I wonder how far back it goes.
- nasalgoat 14y ago
- EvanMiller 14y agoIt's time everyone understood a fundamental precept of startup acquisition rumors: If an acquisition price is leaked before the deal is completed, the acquiree has no intention of selling. In a private acquisition, there are only two parties in a position to leak: the acquirer and the acquiree. The acquirer, which has shareholders, competitors, and lots of money, has no incentive to leak the price on the table, or even the fact that there is a table. It gives away too much information to competitors and creates an unwanted news cycle. So in fact they'll be pissed if information about the negotiation is leaked. If the acquiree actually wants to do a deal, they don't want to piss off the potential acquirer, so they'll keep their mouths shut. But they might have plenty of reasons to leak the negotation price, particularly if they're a company that is losing money and wants to inflate the company's valuation before another round of private financing. Going before investors saying "We turned down a billion dollars from Google, maybe you heard about it" creates a nice focal point for the ensuing discussion about the company's valuation. Negotiating in bad faith like this happens all the time, most famously with Facebook/Yahoo! (2006) and Groupon/Google (2010). So the next time you read another news story about an acquisition rumor that includes a price tag, ignore it, because the story's not for you; it's for a future investor. (Note that the foregoing logic does not apply if the acquiree is publicly traded, because the deal must be approved by shareholders, so the acquisition price is always "leaked" before the papers are signed.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- badgar 14y agoIt's called a leak regardless. Often of it is on purpose we call it a "controlled leak," but it's still a leak. Not all leaks are bad for the party that does the leaking.
- bvi 14y agoThis was possibly done to simply anchor [1] Whatsapp's value, should it seek to be acquired in the future. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring