Bill Gates Encouraged LinkedIn Deal

Speaking in a Bloomberg TV interview shown Friday, Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates weighed in on the company's $26B agreement to purchase LinkedIn (LNKD):  "I think it's a great transaction. LinkedIn brings a lot... The team there have built an incredible audience, so combined with what Microsoft does -- working with people in productivity, helping professionals communicate -- I think there'll be a lot of synergies there. I was very encouraging as that deal came together, and glad to see that it really happened."

Asked whether investors should be supportive of the transaction, Gates said, "The stock price is going to jump up and down... I certainly think that the value of the two companies combined is greater than the two by themselves, but I love the idea that the market wants us to show it... If we can make [LinkedIn] as valuable as the Facebook (FB) feed is in the social world, that's huge value creation, and that'll happen over, you know, a period of years."

When asked for his perspective on how to avoid "screwing up" a deal of this size, Gates commented, "A lot of what LinkedIn does will stay exactly the same. The idea of how you get the contact lists and the user profiles -- some of that synergy is pretty easy without changing a lot of the engineering. Microsoft, like most tech companies, has had deals that have gone better than others. I think we've got good preparation on this one and the nature of the synergy is pretty clear."