Google Wanted To Buy WhatsApp For $10 Billion

When Facebook announced that it was
buying WhatsApp for $19 billion , the first reaction from most people was shock.

After they picked up their jaws from the ground, and digested the acquisition,

eventually they started to wonder why Google didn't buy WhatsApp. After all, Larry Page likes to think big, and there was gossip of Google's interest in WhatsApp a year ago.

Well, it turns out Google did want to buy WhatsApp, it just failed.

Amir Efrati at The Information reports :

"More than six months ago, Google
approached WhatsApp with an odd
offer: It would pay the mobile
messaging startup in exchange for
the right to be notified if the
messaging app entered into
acquisition talks with other
companies, according to a person
involved in the process and two
people briefed on it."

The highly unusual right-to-know offer was worth millions of dollars. WhatsApp rejected that deal.

Efrati says this idea comes from Google's head of M&A, Don Harrison.

After Google got beat in the Instagram sale, it wanted to figure out a way to get an inside edge on acquisitions.

So, he concocted a plan to buy shares of a company in exchange for a heads up on sales. Jessi Hempel at Fortune has more details.

She says Google offered $10 billion for WhatsApp .

And it didn't offer a board seat to WhatsApp's CEO. Obviously, this was a no-brainer for
WhatsApp.

Facebook made an offer that was twice as big, and it moved in a much more decisive way.