The Senior Vice President of Google, Sundar Pichai has denied that the company ever bid on WhatsApp. While he acknowledged the potential in the company, he rubbished claims of the company being interested in purchasing the popular cross platform IM client.

This comes after several reports stated that Google made an offer of $10 billion to WhatsApp, but Facebook was managed to swoop in with an offer of $19 billion. Subsequent reports also stated that Google CEO Larry Page wrote to the founder of WhatsApp urging him to stay away from the acquisition. These reports claimed that the Mountain View giant was doing its best to keep Facebook from going through with the acquisition.

But Pichai while speaking at the MWC said – “Whatsapp was definitely an exciting product. We never made an offer to acquire them. Press reports to the contrary are simply untrue.”

Facebook is one of the top competitors of Google, so those early reports make a lot of sense. It was further believed that Google struck an inside deal with WhatsApp to inform them of any approaches or bids.

• ViaThe Telegraph