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February 20, 2014, 2:00 PM
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Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
Google offered to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion  —  Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $19 billion, but it wasn't the only suitor.  —  My colleague Dan Primack has written a smart post on the numbers that weren't in the press release Facebook (FB) issued announcing it will acquire messaging service WhatsApp.
Facebook:
Facebook to acquire WhatsApp for $4B cash, $12B in Facebook shares, and $3B in restricted stock units, CEO Koum to join Facebook's Board  —  Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp  —  Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross …
Parmy Olson / Forbes:
Jan Koum's rag-to-riches tale, which ended with him signing the WhatsApp deal on the door of his former welfare office  —  Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby  —  Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal …
Jim Goetz / Sequoia Capital:
WhatsApp in numbers: 450M active users, 32 engineers, $0 in marketing, and only $1/year to use  —  Four Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp  —  WhatsApp Co-Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton  —  Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion.
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton's tweets show he tried unsuccessfully to work at Facebook and Twitter in 2009  —  How Things Change  —  Four years ago, Brian Acton was looking for a job.  —  His job at Yahoo, where he'd filled many engineering roles over 11 years, had come to an end.
More: Slate, Guardian and Forbes
Benedict Evans:
WhatsApp's acquisition illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today  —  Whatsapp and $19bn  —  Facebook just bought WhatsApp, paying $16bn in cash and stock and $3bn in RSUs.  WhatsApp has 450m active users, of which 72% are active every day.  It has just 32 engineers.
Jan Koum / WhatsApp Blog:
WhatsApp says it will remain autonomous and nothing will change for users  —  Facebook  —  Almost five years ago we started WhatsApp with a simple mission: building a cool product used globally by everybody.  Nothing else mattered to us.  —  Today we are announcing a partnership …
Amanda Lefebvre / Office Blogs:
Office Web Apps rebranded as Office Online at Office.com  —  Introducing Office Online at Office.com  —  Today, you'll notice something new about Office.com and Office Web Apps-now officially called Office Online.  An online version of the Office you know and trust has been available for quite a while …
Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:
Online bank Simple acquired by Spain's BBVA for $117M — will focus on international growth  —  Nobody expected this Spanish banking acquisition.  —  Simple, the online bank devoted to offering a more humane alternative to traditional banking, announced today that it's being acquired …
Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
HTC to preview Qualcomm-based smartwatch to carriers next week, will not demo publicly  —  HTC Said to Plan Smartwatch Preview Amid Declining Market Share  —  HTC Corp. (2498), the Taiwanese smartphone maker struggling with sliding sales, plans to demonstrate the first of three wearable devices next week …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Acompli Raises $7.3M Series A From Redpoint & Others To Fix Mobile Email  —  Acompli, a company building a mobile email application which functions as an all-in-one productivity app for iPhone, has raised $7.3 million in Series A funding - a sizable investment that points to the scale of the problem the startup is aiming to solve.
Wall Street Journal:
GrubHub Seamless Files Confidentially for Initial Public Offering  —  IPO Could Launch In First Half Of 2014  —  GrubHub Seamless Inc., the online restaurant menu and takeout-ordering service, has made a confidential filing for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Stealthy Security Company Apprity Raises $8 Million  —  The stealthy business security company Apprity, launched by two former Oracle employees, has raised $8 million in its first institutional financing.  —  For its first venture round, Apprity turned to seasoned security technology investors Promod Haque …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
How One Scammer Manipulated Apple's Top Charts To Earn Tens Of Thousands Daily Using A $10 GameSalad Template  —  Something fishy has been going on with Apple's App Store top charts.  No, I'm not talking about “Flappy Bird” (well, maybe that too), but rather how on earth two different developers used …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Tesla CEO Confirms ‘Conversations’ With Apple, Says Any Acquisition ‘Very Unlikely’  —  Following a report earlier this week suggesting Apple had considered purchasing Tesla, Tesla CEO Elon Musk today confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg Television that his company “had conversations” with Apple.
James Temple / Re/code:
Max Levchin's Glow to let businesses help employees fund fertility treatments  —  Glow Targets Businesses, but Will They Take a Shine to It?  —  Glow, which launched an app last summer designed to help couples conceive, has lined up partnerships with Domo, Eventbrite and Evernote as it attempts to …
Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:
Yahoo Launches $10 Million Research Effort to Invent a Smarter Siri  —  Academics at CMU will try to extend Yahoo's services with mobile apps that act like personal assistants.  —  Yahoo's future mobile apps could come with a dash of intelligence that lets them act like personal assistants.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:00 PM ET, February 20, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Daniel Arkin / NBC News:
Gene Shalit, a longtime film critic for NBC's Today who was with the show from 1970 until his retirement in 2010, dies at 100

Gary Baum / The Hollywood Reporter:
A look at the first “case” brought before Objection, which aims to use AI to evaluate news stories, and a Q&A with Objection's founder; the site is now dark

Aidan Ryan / The Boston Globe:
A look at an AI-reliant news site for 19 towns south of Boston, which uses public meeting transcripts and LLMs to produce stories and has 350 paid subscribers

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