Bill Gates on Whatsapp Acquisition: “Microsoft Would Have Been Willing to Buy it”

In a recent interview with Bill Gates, the question of Facebook’s recent acquisition of Whatsapp was bought up; here are Gates’s thoughts on the acquisition:

If there’s a deal that symbolizes where Silicon Valley is today, it’s Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp. What does that say about the economics of Silicon Valley right now?
It means that Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be the next Facebook. Mark has the credibility to say, “I’m going to spend $19 billion to buy something that has essentially no revenue model.” I think his aggressiveness is wise – although the price is higher than I would have expected. It shows that user bases are extremely valuable. It’s software; it can morph into a broad set of things – once you’re set up communicating with somebody, you’re not just going to do text. You’re going to do photos, you’re going to share documents, you’re going to play games together.

It’s obvious that everyone in the industry realizes the great value of Whatsapp’s user-base; and respects it (whether or not they agree that it’s a good source of revenue). When it was mentioned that Google was also looking into Whatsapp Gates responded that Microsoft would’ve been willing to snap it up as well, but probably not at that price:

Apparently, Google was looking at it.
Yeah, yeah. Microsoft would have been willing to buy it, too. . . . I don’t know for $19 billion, but the company’s extremely valuable.

It would be interesting to see what Microsoft would’ve done with Whatsapp, seeing how they already have Skype, which try as it might isn’t really cutting it as a mobile messaging app (I hate Skype chat, there’s just something about it). Although Whatsapp and Skype both have something in common, both WP clients take forever to get updates and are ages behind iOS and Android.

Check out the full interview at the link below:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140313

Category: Applications, Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone