kschroeder

To be quite honest, I am surprised by the thoughtfulness of the responses here. My theory is that power is like gravity; it tends to congregate (using this analogy there are plenty of object lessons that can be drawn). In the United States, at least, we have a central point where power has been gradually been pooled largely in contravention of supreme law of the land. Without getting into a long diatribe, I believe that self-government, i.e. Democracy, works best when power is decentralized. If power is centralized there cannot be self-government and self-government must be, by definition, federalized and decentralized. Democracy and centralization are polar opposites. Granted, both must give a little in the practice of economic and social stability, but we should do this only to a minimal extent. Once people learn that they force other people to give them what they want through the force of politics we have lost the ability to self-govern and Democracy becomes a Cronyocracy.

I don't know the actual reasons, but people are looking at the question from the perspective of "what does Facebook get out of this" when the opposite might actually be true. They may have seen that someone else could buy up WhatsApp and pose a real threat to Facebook's market share. So it might be entirely possible that this was a defensive buy. If spending $16 billion now meant that you didn't have to spend $50 billion later on it would make sense.

One does not simply spend $16 billion without giving it a good deal of forethought why.