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By Alexei Oreskovic and Leila Abboud SAN FRANCISCO/BARCELONA (Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg will take a victory lap at the worlds largest mobile technology conference in Barcelona on Monday, after beating out Google Inc in a $19 billion acquisition of free messaging service WhatsApp. Just 18 months after appearing at risk of getting crushed by the swelling mobile wave, the No. 1 social network is riding high. Now, Zuckerbergs purchase of WhatsApp – while raising eyebrows with the hefty price paid for a company that boasts 450 million users but has little revenue – places Facebook at the heart of smartphone communications. Zuckerberg and WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum are likely to cast themselves as partners not foes of the industry in their appearances at Mobile World Congress on Monday.