It was bound to happen, but I didn’t expect it quite this soon or for quite this much dough.

Facebook shelled out $16B $19B in cash and stock ($4B and $12B respectively) for the 30-some person WhatsApp team that built a messaging empire of nearly half a billion users. Note: an additional stash of $3B worth of stock is also available after a bearing period.

Read Mark Zuckerberg’s post on the acquisition here. For the official Facebook word on the impending deal, head here.

With this, it’s about time we updated Zuckerberg’s recent quote:

Facebook is a mobile company.