It took 10 days for Facebook to make by far its largest acquisition and quite possibly the most expensive acquisition of a private venture capital-backed company yet.
The social network spent up to $19bn on WhatsApp, the fast-growing chat app, on Wednesday after Mark Zuckerberg met with its founders the Sunday before last.
WhatsApp is a publicity-shy, 50-person outfit based down the road from Facebook. Unlike many companies in Silicon Valley, which drink up as much funding as possible, it was run leanly on funding of about $60m, half as much as the much smaller Snapchat. Unlike most internet companies, it does not take advertising, instead charging modest subscription fees of $1 a year to some users.
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