Snap, the company that’s behind the very popular image messaging app Snapchat was offered $30 Billion by Google for acquisition back in 2016, according to a report published in Business Insider. This isn’t the first time the company was given an offer for acquisition. Back in 2013, Facebook had offered $3 Billion, which is ten times lesser than what Google offered last year.
Such buyout talks intensified before the Snapchat maker’s IPO in early March, though the report notes that informal talks are quite common during public offerings and fundraising rounds. This $30 billion offer according to one source in the report has supposedly remained “on table since the IPO.”
Snap spokesperson told Business Insider that, as far as formal discussions go, “these rumors are false.” Google declined to comment. Though it must be kept in mind that Alphabet (Google’s parent) did contribute to the $20B Series F financial round Snap raised in May 2016.
This report is sure to give investors a little setback given the fact that Snap stocks haven’t been doing well in the past few weeks. On 2nd August, Snap shares were trading at $12.73 per share, down 2.8%, as of 11:30 a.m. ET Wednesday.
That’s 25% lower than the initial public offering price of $17 per share, and more than 50% off its peak closing price of $27.09 per share on March 3. Instagram Stories now has 250 million daily users compared to Snapchat’s 166 million. Instagram’s usage per day beats the “more than 30 minutes per day” of usage Snapchat claims on average now, as well as the over 30 minutes per day for under 25s and 20 minutes per day for over 25s Snap cited in its IPO filing.
As far as Google is concerned, the company has been trying to get in the social networking segment for years now. Google+ has received near zero response and lets accept it, even Google has given up on it. Google and Snap together can make a very good combination. Google can implement and monetize the platform with it’s advertising expertise while Snap can help Google get a much needed foot hold in the segment. When Facebook couldn’t acquire Snap, it went out to add Stories and interactive filters on Instagram, which too has been gaining tremendous momentum surpassing Snapchat’s own metrics.
CEO Evan Spiegel has been known to be highly independent and has never shown any interest in an acquisition.
