WhatsApp denies $1bn Google acquisition claim The denial followed a report from DigitalTrends.com claiming negotiations have been continuing for more than a month, with WhatsApp reportedly "playing hardball" to secure a better price from Google. WhatsApp has, according to some studies, played a direct part in declining SMS growth, and is reported to earn $100m a year. It processes up to 18 billion messages per day and is currently available in 100 countries on 750 mobile networks. It is routinely found among the top apps in each of those countries and would be seen as a major prize for any of the giants of Silicon Valley. It charges a yearly, nominal fee to keep the service free of advertising, and also has deals with some mobile networks for international messages. Previous unconfirmed rumours claimed that Facebook was also negotiating to buy the popular cross-platform mobile messaging app. More recently, however, Facebook has sought to attract more users to its own, competing free messaging app via Facebook Home, its new Android software, which was unveiled last week. A bid for WhatsApp would make sense for Google. It has reportedly been working on a new messaging service to be called Babel, and Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal admitted last year that the company has so far "done an incredibly poor job of servicing our users here."