Social Networking site Facebook on Wednesday announced that it is buying mobile messenger service WhatsApp for $ 16 Billion.  Facebook has agreed to pay $12 billion in stock and $4 billion in cash in addition to this it will pay $3 billion to WhatsApp's founders and employees as part of the deal, making the total deal to $19 billion.

WhatsApp was founded in the year 2009 by former employees of Yahoo. WhatsApp today claims a subscriber base of more than 450 million users, 35 million users in India. Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg posted on his account regarding the deal with WhatsApp in the later hours of Wednesday.

“I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook. WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook. The product roadmap will remain unchanged and the team is going to stay in Mountain View. Over the next few years, we're going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. We also expect that WhatsApp will add to our efforts forInternet.org, our partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone,” added Zuckerberg.

This is Facebook's second successful deal. In the year 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion however failed to acquire Snapchat in 2013.

(AW: Vamshi)