Who owns WhatsApp, and what is it used for?

If you’re a smartphone user, you’ve probably heard about WhatsApp, but what is it exactly, and who owns it?

In this day and age, the predominant smartphone types you can get basically boil down to either iPhone or Android. Apple creates the hardware for the iPhone and its operating system, iOS. Android is a little bit different, however, in that way because many different manufacturers can create phones with its operating system as it is open-source. With that said, Google is the primary developer for most Android phones.

Both iPhone and Android have proprietary versions of certain features, such as video chat. However, iPhone’s Facetime feature, for instance, is not cross-platform compatible with Android devices. That’s where WhatsApp comes in.

What does WhatsApp do and who owns it?

Put simply, WhatsApp is a way of sending text-based messages, photos, videos, and even live video chats from one phone user to another using “end-to-end encryption,” according to the application’s website. This means the conversation you are having with another WhatsApp user is confined to only those who are included in the chat.

On a practical level — which takes today’s competing proprietary smartphone software into consideration — WhatsApp allows iPhone and Android users to do things like video chat in a way that is free and easy as the application can be found on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Not only is there no cost to install WhatsApp, but the setup is also painless and requires little more than entering your phone number. Around the world, over 2 billion people use WhatsApp to stay in touch with others.

Though WhatsApp started as its own independent company, founded by Yahoo! alums Jan Koum and Brian Acton, it became part of Facebook in 2014. Thus, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.