Report Says Google Was Once Interested In Acquiring Snap Last Year

With Snap Inc SNAP shares trading at around $13, well below their $17 IPO price, the last thing shareholders want to hear right now is how much higher the company’s valuation may have been a year ago. Yet three separate sources, including one company insider, have now suggested Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL was reportedly interesting in buying Snap in early 2016 for at least $30 billion, according to Business Insider.

With Snap currently valued at a market cap of only around $15 billion, most Snap investors would take a $30 billion buyout offer in a heartbeat.

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The Rumor Mill

For the record, Snap has denied any official discussions took place between the two companies. And despite the flurry of deals in recent years, tech investors know to take market rumors with a grain of salt. In fact, Google has been the subject of a number of other M&A rumors this year alone:

• In January, Alphabet was rumored to be one of a handful of companies interested in a buyout of salesforce.com, inc. CRM.
• Google has been mentioned as one of the many possible buyers of Twitter Inc TWTR in the past couple of years.
• Back in January, Google was reportedly interested in a possible buyout of music streaming company SoundCloud.
• When Spotify switched to Google’s cloud system back in April, there were rumors swirling that Google would be interested in an outright takeover of Spotify.
• Google has also been mentioned as a possible buyer of wearable fitness device maker Fitbit Inc FIT.

What Could Have Been

None of these rumors have come to fruition (at least not yet), and the Snap buyout probably won’t either. For now, a marriage between Google and Snap and the $30 billion price tag that goes along with it is simply a reminder of how things have not gone as planned for Snap and its early investors so far in 2017.