Google is not buying out WhatsApp for $1 billion

WhatsApp has denied swirling media rumours that it was in talks with Google for a $1 billion buyout. The report first appeared in  DigitalTrends, which quoted inside sources as saying,“WhatsApp is in the negotiating phase over prices with Google. The report states that the deal started four or five weeks ago and adds that WhatsApp is “playing hardball” and jockeying for a higher acquisition price, which currently is “close to” $1 billion right now. [caption id=“attachment_691557” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  WhatsApp image from Google Play[/caption] However Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp’sbusiness development head, denied the reports in an interview with  AllThingsDigital. The report merely stated that Arora had denied the report, adding that he had declined to comment further. Previously   TechCrunch had reported that Facebook wanted to buy Whatsapp. The report had quoted sources close to the matter. However, in a statement to  VentureBeat, WhatsApp had denied any such deal taking placed and the company’s business head Neeraj Arora said, “The TechCrunch article is a rumor and not factually accurate. We have no further information to share at the moment.” Whatsapp has been one of the biggest success stories as far as messaging apps are concerned.  At the end of October  2011,  the messaging service had announced that they now saw over 1 billion messages being sent in a single day. It was also recently rated the most downloaded Android app in India. Whatsapp  blogpost sees nearly That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second.. These are pretty big numbers as far as Google concerned. In its current form, WhatsApp has no advertising. According to  WhatApp’s blogpost, the reason that there is no advertising is, Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product. 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. Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.