On the other hand, I did pay the $1 for Whatsapp back in the day and I was promised it'd be ad free. Want that $1 back, I actually even deleted my account and uninstalled Whatsapp!
I feel a bit for Brian Acton - iirc he refused to sell because the 500M users paying $500M dollars was more than enough to fund his tiny team (of 30?), but when the offer went up to 19B$ it's just kind of hard to turn down - there's extreme opportunity cost there. Most people would sell before that, 19B$ of principle is quite a lot.
I think it's just if you're empire building - and Zuck is insanely good at this, one of the best - then it'll never be optimal to charge vs. grow massively and then monetize the larger attention base.
Zuck is also in a trench warfare competition with other social media players, it's far from a monopoly. He's historically been more inclined to do things that were worse for growth, but better for users when they had more of a dominant position - but he can't do that anymore.
Somewhat relatedly Apple really missed an opportunity with iMessage. Had they timed it right they could have had a dominant cross platform chat. Instead they're going to be stuck with the modern equivalent of BBM while Zuck and Meta erase their only remaining stronghold in the US as iPhone users continue to move to WhatsApp.
Now Brian Acton has a huge pile of money to help fund Signal, so I don't think he has to feel too terrible about selling out.
> Somewhat relatedly Apple really missed an opportunity with iMessage. Had they timed it right they could have had a dominant cross platform chat.
Google also had the opportunity to do this. Around the same time iMessage launched, Google made Hangouts the default SMS app on Android with a similar capability to upgrade to Internet-based messaging when all parties to a conversation had it. Hangouts was cross-platform. Rumor has it carriers whined and Google caved.
I'm kind of glad Google doesn't have a dominant messaging service, but it's only true due to their own lack of commitment.
I used Hangouts including the dogfood versions internally at Google. Problem was it was too complicated because it was designed by Googlers for Googlers. So it supported desktop and mobile, work email and personal email and phone numbers, text and video, and so on. In short, every single complexity conceivable was crammed into the app.
Whereas Whatsapp was simple - only phone numbers to sign up, only text and images, only mobile phones. That simplicity meant my parents could onboard smoothly and operate it without having to navigate a maze of UX. I literally saw Whatsapp winning in real time vs Hangouts and other alternatives.
I used Hangouts for a while and had a bunch of contacts on it when it was Android's default SMS app. Many of them were not particularly technical, including one of my parents whom I don't recall telling to use it. If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account. iPhone users had to work a little harder for it (install the app and remember the password to the Gmail account they probably already had).
I don't recall the UX on the mobile client having extra complexity over other messaging apps if I didn't go digging in the settings, but it's been a while.
A lot of people have a google account because it is created when they setup the smartphone or enter the playstore for the first time for the first time but don't even realize it is not only a "smartphone account" and it gives them access to google workspace/gmail.
I think the concept of a user having an existing Gmail account if they aren't in the Google ecosystem is a bit of hubris.
There are many people I run across who bypassed the whole Gmail and Google Workspace ecosystems and have rolled along merrily with me.com and other email providers.
It's not a given that users will have bothered to register for a Google account unless they grew up in the Bay Area after a certain time period.
Wind back the clock to when Google tried to roll out Hangouts and the Gmail penetration rate was even lower among the non-Android users out there.
I'm just thinking of my own friends and family, who are mostly not tech nerds and none of whom live in the Bay area. Gmail launched with so much more storage than any other free email service everyone thought it was an April Fools joke (no doubt in part because it was launched on April 1). Everybody wanted it, and nobody who got an invite code before I did would give me theirs.
This is all anecdotal of course. Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but how quickly they gave up was weird.
Gmail as a product was simple - a better version of Yahoo or Hotmail where you don't have to worry about storage size nor have to sort emails into various folders. Search worked magically and spam filters were better than anyone else. In short, UX was superior.
Hangouts UX sucked big time. I remember lots of frustrating sessions with my parents about why video calls weren't going through, or how can some random family member join our family thread when they don't have a Gmail account etc.
I didn't intend a comparison between Gmail and Hangouts, just to say a whole lot of people already had the required account.
You definitely had a rougher experience with it than I did, but my main point is Google launched it, didn't seriously iterate on it, and gave up its strongest distribution channel at the first sign of pressure from carriers. Since they keep launching messaging products, I must conclude they want to be in that space and it was foolish of them to squander their best opportunity.
I remember laughing with colleagues as the first edition of the evening standard came in with the 1G gmail on the front page. I remember the exact location I saw it too.
couldn’t believe they had fallen for an April fools.
But that was a limited time window when gmail massively outweighed the 10-20mbit of things like hotmail with effectively unlimited storage.
> If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account.
Sure. But is it the same Google account that your relatives email you on, or a different one that only that phone is using? When you drop this phone are you going to sign into that same Google account or make a new one? The answers for non-technical users are non-obvious.
It's possible to use Android as bundled with a Pixel device without a Google account, but it's a hassle because you can't use Play Store. You can use Aurora Store as an anonymous client, F-Droid for open source apps, APKs from download sites, or the like if you're so inclined, but all of those add significant effort or unreliability.
I tried to daily a phone with MicroG for a while and had lots of trouble with location accuracy and speed. I tried out several third-party NLPs but never got acceptable results.
Is there any data that shows people in the US are switching to WhatsApp? The only people I've ever seen use it are people with family in other countries. The statistics I've seen indicate that iPhone usage amongst American teenagers is high and still increasing(1), which almost certainly would lead to higher iMessage usage.
how do imessage and android users communicate with each others? Do android users really still use sms to reach apple users? Don't they have group chats everywhere?
Here in europe every club/association/group has a whatsapp group chat. For instance here since the official app provided by the government has a super clunky UX most people get information from primary school through a whatsapp group chat managed by the parent's representative who has exclusive access to teaching group.
Yes, I text my brother who has an iphone. Thats our primary communication when not speaking.
As a counter to your question I've never used whatsapp and never saw a reason. What group chats? Are they groups of personal friends or mostly things you would 'follow' like a football club?
There is the parent's group for the school mentionnned above, my cycling club to discuss the upcoming rides/events and share pics (replace cycling with any kind of hobby you can think of), we have a family group chat with my parents and siblings, which are leaving in a different country as mine, an extended family in law group chat, comprised mostly of people living in another continent. At a former job we had a group chat that was meant to discuss anything not related to work, arrange out of office meetups. It sporadically served to share valuable information relative to work when there has been natural disaster so that people don't try to reach the office and stay at home. Much quicker than calling all employees.
Additionally whenever there is a social event a group chat is created so that people can discuss the organization, and after the event share their sentiments, pictures, videos.
It is never mandatory to participates in all those group chats but a lot of info go through them and they are usually useful. And the family group chats are great when you only get the chance to meet them more than a couple times a year.
Thanks for that information - it does seem to provide some good utility. And now that you mentioned it I recall my father uses it to talk to our polish relatives as that's the most convenient platform. I am not in that circle tho as I don't know polish haha.
Glad to hear they aren't mandatory, that would be my fear for certain things.
Highly doubt that - I feel like most people I communicate with on WhatsApp are for group chats vs individual messages might be imesssage or signal or many other platforms.
There's no way they actually earned $500M/year. Even if Whatsapp had 100 employees making $200k/year on average, that's $20M on salaries. Add an another very generous $80M on infra/admin etc costs and they'd have been making $400M profit. With that much profit achieved within such a short period, in the QE funny money era they could have IPO'd at $50-100 billion easily.
They only had 55 employees when facebook bought them. I suspect their infrastructure costs were much less than you've suggested too. There's a reason whatsapp only supported one device: they didn't store messages after they were delivered.
Obviously, but the parent talks about Apple losing its US market to WhatsApp. Not sure that's remotely realistic, and them adding advertising only makes it even less realistic.
There was a recent interview (iirc maybe with Ben Thompson or at least he mentioned it) where Zuck said they were seeing their growth continue to accelerate in the US and it sounded like they’d be on track to overtake iMessage in a couple years if the rate continued.
Growth like that happens slowly and then quickly. I’m using WhatsApp more now and I didn’t use it before, so empirically I’ve seen the expansion personally.
Went to South Africa on vacation last year. United lost our luggage on the first leg of the trip, which then became South African Airways responsibility to sort out because they handled our final leg.
I communicated directly with the SAA baggage agent over WhatsApp. Then communicated over WhatsApp with the courier delivering our bags . Best customer service ever.
Though doing without WhatsApp is getting dicey with a preschooler in a couple of activities, and it will probably get even harder to keep my heels dug in once he's in school...
