Apple has made a strong business on trusting that consumers are willing to pay good money for great products. This WhatsApp deal demonstrates the exact same thing. People are willing to spend what they consider to be a fair amount of money for a great product with a great user experience. Obviously some people don't call Apple's prices "fair," but that's a topic for another time.

This $19B WhatsApp deal makes me extremely happy (and I don't use WhatsApp or Facebook) if only for the reason of demonstrating that a customer experience focused product still has tremendous value. We don't need free products with ad support to make the world spin.