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.

The WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum took the stage in Barcelona today to announce the arrival of voice calling to the Android and iOS variants of the application.

The latest WhatsApp update for Android gives users the ability to hide their profile image, status, and their “last seen” status. The new privacy features are a welcome update to the world’s most popular cross-platform messaging service, which acquired by Facebook earlier this week for an incredible $19 billion.

Google was willing to trump Facebook’s $19 billion offer to buy mobile messaging service WhatsApp, new reports suggest.

While it is well known that Google was interested in acquiring WhatsApp, it was previously thought that the company was only willing to offer $10 billion. Not so, according to The Information, which claims to have spoken with three people involved in the negotiations between the two parties.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Facebook has acquired WhatsApp for a ridiculous $19 billion, but it wasn’t the only Silicon Valley giant that was willing to stump up silly stacks of cash for the cross-platform messaging service. Sources say Google was also interested, but it only offered $10 billion.