Microsoft gets approval for LinkedIn acquisition at $26 Billion
Software giant from Redmond got an approval from the European Union on Tuesday in its largest acquisition of LinkedIN for $26 billion.
Microsoft announced this deal back in June. As stated by Brad Smith (Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer) EU’s approval was the final step towards closing the deal. Largest Microsoft acquisition already was approved in the United States, Canada, Brazil and South Africa.
Microsoft plans to use LinkedIn’s marketing and recruiting services for better advantage with its rivals. LinkedIn is currently generating $3 billion annualy from their services.
Approval from the European union harms Salesforce.com Inc that lost from Microsoft in bidding process. They claim that Microsoft will get unfair advantage over their competitors with this acquisition. Salesforce Inc also said that regulators should closely watch Microsoft’s use of LinkedIn.
On the other hand, EU said it is unlikely that this deal will allow Microsoft to hurt competition such as Salesforce.com or Oracle.
To win this approval Microsoft will have to allow LinkedIn rivals access to its Office programming interfaces of their Office programs like Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook.
Microsoft also has to allow access to its Microsoft Graph, which is a collection of software used for building applications in Microsoft cloud.
