Scuttlebutt – Google To Acquire Snapchat?

We keep hearing that Google floated an offer of at least $30 billion to buy Snap in early 2016.

Three people, including people inside and close to the company, separately confirmed they had heard the chatter and price tag, with one calling it an “open secret” among Snap’s upper ranks and certain tech industry circles.

The current market value for Snapchat is around $15b, making Google’s offer look especially generous; but the value did rise to this area after the 2016 IPO. Since the news of Google’s supposed offer circulated, Snap’s share price has been climbing, despite no reports of renewed interest from either company.

However, a Snap spokesperson said the rumours were untrue, and Google declined to comment.

The report added the offer is an “open secret” among tech insiders and the two companies are very close, with Google parent Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt advising Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.

I imagine Snapchat would have been folded into Google’s suite of tools. I could seeing it being Google Plus’s answer to Facebook Messenger  even more so now that every message app and its mother is trying to imitate Snapchat. Spectacles might look more like Google Glass, and perhaps the app would have even more original sponsored content.

Still, many of the things we take for granted about Snapchat now such as Memories, Spectacles, and plenty of its original content  came about after the alleged deal would have happened. Everything we currently know about Snapchat could have been changed to accommodate Google’s engineers.

Joining forces could be beneficial to both companies. Google would get a top social property to make up for its Google , Buzz and Wave flops. It could also reap data about people’s social graphs, where they spend time and what topics they care about, allowing it to improve its ad targeting and measurement.