From InfoWorld: Microsoft made a splash earlier this year when it announced the largest acquisition in its history, signing an agreement to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. But now, Salesforce is trying to convince the European Union to block the deal.
Salesforce Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton will argue to the EU's competition authority that Microsoft's control of LinkedIn's dataset following an acquisition would be anticompetitive. EU competition chief Margarethe Vestager said in January that her agency would be looking directly at whether a company's use of data is bad for competition, and these complaints seem aimed squarely at those comments.
"Microsoft's proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition," Norton said in a statement on Thursday. "By gaining ownership of LinkedIn's unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage."
The spat is part of what seems to be at least a partial unraveling of the relationship between Microsoft and Salesforce. Both companies were in a bidding war for LinkedIn earlier this year, but Microsoft won out. Since then, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has taken several shots at Microsoft over the deal.
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