Several months ago, Facebook acquired messaging startup WhatsApp for a whopping $16 billion, plus an additional $3 billion for its founders and small staff . On Tuesday, Facebook announced that in 2012 and 2013, WhatsApp lost a combined $192.8 million. (WhatsApp famously has no advertising, and its current revenue model is to make money off annual subscription fees.)

Facebook also disclosed for the first time how it arrived at that $16 billion purchasing figure: $15.3 billion of that was simply wrapped up in the nebulous accounting term: “goodwill.”

"We're the most atypical Silicon Valley company you'll come across," Brian Acton, a WhatsApp co-founder, told Wired UK in February. "We were founded by thirtysomethings; we focused on business sustainability and revenue rather than getting big fast; we've been incognito almost all the time; we're mobile first; and we're global first."

Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner Research, told Ars that while the $15 billion goodwill figure is high, it's not as crazy as it may seem.

"It is a big task for the WhatsApp and Facebook teams and this is a product they will need to focus on and really build as a community, but if there are missteps along the way then all that goodwill will be a sorely missed resource," he said.

This announcement came on the same day that Facebook filed its quarterly earnings reports. This year, the social network giant profited $806 million in its third quarter, nearly double its total from the same period a year ago.