Why Facebook acquired WhatsApp

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

Tech News, Technology, News

4.3 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2014

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology — and anything else that pops into the twisted minds of this week's hosts. Join Dieter Bohn, Chris Ziegler, David Pierce, and Ellis Hamburger for a scintillating discussion on latest tech news. On this week's episode, we discuss the dizzying sums of money Facebook spent on WhatsApp, the Loop mobile wallet, and Google's indoor mapping prototype, Project Tango. Audio: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Vergecast. It is the week of February 17th I had to look down
0:57.3	except in spirit. Basically all I know about Josh's baby is that Laura keeps tweeting
1:02.6	but it's still there. It's still there. It's probably watching right now so be careful what you
1:06.4	say. Laura just keeps me like we got a baby on Tuesday and now it's Saturday and I still have it
1:12.1	and I mean it's picking up. What fun is it until I can read? Come on. We're supposed to talk about
1:19.0	the Verge baby vertical or is that still a secret? That's such a good idea. That's not it.
1:25.2	Just just apps for babies. Well it's about it's about implants. Dipper reviews. Yeah that kind of
1:31.6	thing. That's not that. You can monitor like the baby's vision and make sure their eyes around the
1:36.0	price for their whole life you know we don't want any losers. So basically like if you like really
1:40.8	are hell bent on getting your kid into like an awesome preschool you're just you're all over
1:45.6	Verge babies. Yeah they all go to the Montessori schools that kind of thing. No no no see you guys
1:50.3	on a story school. Verge babies isn't about babies. Verge babies is about the same thing
1:55.2	that the Verge is only it's staffed by Muppet's. It's the Muppet babies version of the Verge.
2:01.8	We all speak in high squeaky voices. We're perishingly adorable. But we cover the same thing
2:06.0	all the time. Yeah I'm into it. Yeah. Like the NSA we just get really angry but it's babies. So
2:10.6	what are you doing? It's horrible. It's so angry about the neutrality of prison.
2:16.4	Criven neutrality is going to be the hot topic I think. Oh my god. Okay so it was a week.
2:21.9	Yeah it's been a week. It seemed like it was not going to be a week and then Facebook decided to
2:26.3	make a week out of it. No big deal. Yeah. So they bought WhatsApp for a billion. No I'm sorry 16
2:33.3	no maybe 19. It's $16 billion in cash and stock plus $3 billion in restricted stock that
2:41.1	invests over the course of three years. Explain that in English because I have gotten this
2:44.7	week a thousand times. That's all it is. It's basically 16 billion up front and three billion
	...

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