Microsoft founder Bill Gates has reportedly expressed skepticism about the recent acquisition deal between Facebook and WhatsApp for an eye-popping $19 billion.

Gates said that fifty years ago, no 55-person company was bought for $19 billion, adding that it showed how Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg was an out-of-box thinker.

However, a skeptical Gates hoped that the mega billion dollar deal worked for Zuckerberg, Huffington Post reports.

In

his earlier interview, Gates had noted that Zuckerberg's aggressiveness was wise, but the price of the deal was higher than what he expected.

The report added that the Facebook-WhatsApp deal has hit the headlines also because of the companies' opposing takes on privacy as WhatsApp had prided itself on collecting as little information about those users as possible, while Facebook is notorious for invading its users' privacy.

However, both Zuckerberg and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum have assured that Facebook would not interfere with the way WhatsApp operates, the report added.