News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs. Parent comment

Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by MatthiasP on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @08:17PM (#7268102)
Nationwide SMS is dirt cheap in most of Europe too. But the cost goes up rapidly when you send messages across borders, say from Italy to Germany. And international MMS are just ridiculously expensive. A friend of mine once paid ~5€ for a single MMS sent from Croatia to Germany. Croatian, Slovenian and Austrian telcos all wanted their share of roaming fees.

With WhatsApp you don't need to worry about all these things.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by ForHackernews on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @09:10PM (#7268336)
Seems like carriers or device manufacturers could easily undercut them by offering the same service, but preinstalled. I guess Apple already does, with iMessage. If only they weren't so blindly stubborn about interoperability.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus ... by sjg007 on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @10:11PM (#7268572)
The problem with iMessage is that you don't know if your friend has an iPhone.
[ Parent | on HN ]