(CNN) -- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, speaking to
mobile tech leaders in Barcelona
Zuckerberg's comments at Mobile World Congress,
referencing the eye-watering price paid for WhatsApp, were met with surprise.
But Zuckerberg said the company was "a great fit for
us. Already almost half-a-billion people love using WhatsApp for messaging and
it's the most engaging app we've ever seen exist on mobile so far.
"It's on a path to connecting a billion people.
There are very few services in the world that can reach that level and they're
all incredibly valuable."
Zuckerberg said there were no plans to harvest data from
WhatsApp messages, in answer to a question from the audience. "That's the
service that people want, we would be silly to change it."
Asked if he thought concerns over privacy could be a
problem for Facebook as it aims for greater global penetration, he said:
"The NSA issue is a real issue, especially for American internet
companies.
"Trust is just such an important thing when you're
thinking about using any service where you're going to share important and
personal information.
"We continue to work to be sure we can share
everything that the government is asking of us."
"The government kind of blew it on this. Governments
have a responsibility to protect folks and to also be transparent about what
they're doing and I think they've just been way over the line in terms of
sharing what they are doing.
"But they are only now starting to get to the range
of where they should have been. I think this whole thing could have been
avoidable and it would have been a lot better for the internet."
Asked if Facebook would consider bidding again for
Snapchat, Zuckerberg said: "After buying a company for $16 billion you're
probably done for a while." Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion
offer from Facebook last year.
Zuckerberg's debut at
the trade show, the biggest of its kind in the world, underlines the importance
of mobile to the future of the social media giantRead more: cnn
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