San Francisco : Search engine giant Google had offered $30 billion to buy Snap Inc — the parent company of popular messaging app Snapchat — in 2016 and a similar offer is still open, a media report said.

Google had held informal dialogue with Snap and floated an offer of $30 billion before the latter’s last funding round, said a report in Business Insider on Thursday.

Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel, who is widely considered as being independent, apparently did not show interest in selling his firm to Google or anybody else.

Spiegel also values running Snap in Southern California and outside of Silicon Valley, where Alphabet — Google’s parent company is headquartered.

Earlier, in 2013, Google was rumoured to have been tried to acquire Snapchat for $4 billion after Spiegel refused an offer from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the report added.

Snap Inc is set to announce earnings report next week, its second since going public at $17 just four months ago.

—IANS