Snap Inc. Now Has Another Competitor In Google, Should Have Taken The $30 Billion Deal

Recently, it was revealed that Snapchat is quickly losing ground to Instagram Stories despite the latter being a clone of the former. This applies to both the number of users and marketers who might have paid Snap Inc. for ad space. Now, the youth-centric social media app has to contend with Google, which is planning on releasing a service to compete with Snapchat Discover.

Called Stamp, the new service is meant to feature a magazine-type format in order to deliver news and content, Bloomberg recently reported. Anyone who has seen Snapchat’s own Discover service will instantly understand what Google is trying to achieve.

Stamp actually stems from the partnership that the search engine giant made with a company called AMP, which specializes in making pages load faster. Its work is particularly beneficial when it comes to online articles, which can be frustratingly slow after transitioning from social media sites. In a statement released by Google, the tech firm addressed the matter in a limited fashion.

“The success of the open source AMP project is down to the constant collaboration with publishers that involves working early on upcoming features,” the statement reads. “We don’t have anything to announce at the moment but look forward to sharing more soon.”

This spells trouble for Snap Inc., which is already looking at a shaky future thanks to the huge success by Instagram Stories. The company was relying on Snapchat Discover to bring in more ad revenue, but Google’s entry could jeopardize this arrangement.

What makes this situation rather interesting are the reports that Google was actually offering to buy Snapchat last year, Digital Trends reports. The search engine behemoth reportedly placed $30 billion on the table, which Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel refused. Looking at the financial fallout that this refusal might have set off, perhaps it would have been wiser to accept.