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A comment on Facebook leak hints at its defense against a government-ordered breakup. Parent comment

Re:Facebook leak hints at its defense against a government-o... by em500 on Monday October 05, 2020 @10:42AM (#24688172)
Whatsapp was something like 50 employees and a 400m users when FB bought them in 2014. Plenty of people (though not not all) were baffled by the 19B price that they paid at the time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7275470, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7272641), especially in the US where Whatsapp was/is relatively unpopular.
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Re:Facebook leak hints at its defense against a government-o... by donor20 on Monday October 05, 2020 @07:24PM (#24693152)
That's a great set of links. The hotmail comparison is apt - Microsoft basically trashed / dropped hotmail? So these acquisitions can go either way?

The risk with what's up is definitely higher. That said, Facebook has an INCREDIBLE acquisition success rate with insta and whatsup.

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Re:Facebook leak hints at its defense against a government-o... by Lammy on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @12:18PM (#24699381)
Facebook didn't make the WhatsApp acquisition blind. They had data from their Onavo VPN service showing exactly how popular it was compared to their own Messenger.
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