Google Says It Never Offered To Buy WhatsApp For Billions Of Dollars

There have been multiple reports that Google offered to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion and that it was willing to outbid Facebook's $19 billion offer. But Google Vice President Sundar Pichai says neither of those things are true.

"WhatsApp was definitely an exciting product," Pichai said at World Mobile Congress this week in Barcelona. The Telegraph's Matt Warman first reported the quote. "We never made an offer to acquire them. Press reports to the contrary are simply untrue."

It's not clear what Pichai's definition of an "acquisition offer" is. He may mean no formal offer was ever given, or he may mean the talks never happened. Pichai says the two companies had been communicating, but not about an acquisition.

Here's what another Google executive, Eric Schmidt, had to say about the Google-WhatsApp buyout rumors.