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"Microsoft founder Bill Gates has revealed that the PC maker was interested in WhatsApp before Facebook bought it in February. Speaking in an interview with Rolling Stone, the 58-year-old admitted that $19 billion may have been a steep price to pay.  &amp;quot;Microsoft would have been willing to buy [WhatsApp] too. I don&amp;#039;t know for $19 billion, but the company&amp;#039;s extremely valuable,&amp;quot; Gates shared. The Forbes richest man of 2014 - who recently stepped down as chairman for a new advisory role at Microsoft - also praised Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg for making the move. &amp;quot;Mark has the credibility to say, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m going to spend $19 billion to buy something that has essentially no revenue model&amp;#039;. I think his aggressiveness is wise - although the price is higher than I would have expected. It shows that user bases are extremely valuable.&amp;quot;  Gates added that he and Zuckerberg are similar in some ways. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re both Harvard dropouts, we both had strong, stubborn views of what software could do. I give him more credit for shaping the user interface of his product,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s more of a product manager than I was. I&amp;#039;m more of a coder, down in the bowels and the architecture, than he is. But, you know, that&amp;#039;s not that major of a difference. I start with architecture, and Mark starts with products, and Steve Jobs started with aesthetics.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apps/news/a557785/bill-gates-microsoft-would-have-been-willing-to-buy-whatsapp-too/>