Snapchat's parent company, Snap, has set up shop in Switzerland and hired a specialist in software protection, according to Bloomberg.
Laurent Balmelli is the cofounder of Strong.Codes, a two-year-old startup that sells software that protects companies from having their code tampered with or reverse-engineered.
According to the report, Balmelli recently registered a Snap email address in Switzerland.
It's possible Snap has acquired Strong.Codes, though the company won't comment. Snap set up a Swiss office at the end of December, registered to the same address as Strong.Codes in the city of Yverdon-les-Bains. It isn't clear whether Balmelli's cofounders Johan Wehrli, Julien Rinaldini, and Pascal Junod have gone to Snap.
Bloomberg's report suggest Snap has hired Balmelli as a defensive move against Facebook, which has replicated many of Snapchat's features on its own platforms and on Instagram. That copycatting was cited as a risk in Snap's IPO filing last week.
But software engineers have poured cold water on the idea, pointing out that Facebook will have cloned Snapchat's features by observing then building them themselves, rather than through reverse-engineering.
what? the risk isn't FB stealing or reverse engineering snap's code; it's FB taking idea and building themselves. https://t.co/Ec7iT4Wht0
— Mat Balez (@matbalez) February 9, 2017
Further obfuscating how the app functions has NO impact on IG mimicking it. IG has mimicked functionality, and needs no implementation help
— Josh Dickson (@joshdickson40) February 8, 2017Join the conversation about this story »
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