Measures Laid Down for Microsoft's Acquisition of LinkedIn

BENGALURU: The European commission has now approved Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn. European Commission examined how Microsoft could use its brand name to proliferate the user base on LinkedIn. The commission focused on the effect on employment and jobs related social networking website, if Microsoft was to pre-install LinkedIn on Windows PCs and combines the LinkedIn user database with that of Microsoft, as reported in Tech 2.

Another area that concerned European Commission was Customer Relationship Software services. To verify this, European Commission evaluated if Microsoft could stay ahead of the curve by bundling Microsoft Customer Relationship Management Software with Sales Intelligence Solutions from LinkedIn, and denying competing Customer Relationship Management solution vendors from access to the full LinkedIn database.

It was learnt that LinkedIn Sales Intelligence product is not a fundamental solution to have, and access to the LinkedIn database is not mandatory to compete in the Customer Relationship Software services market.

In response to this, Microsoft will facilitate IT admins and users to decide whether to display user interface on LinkedIn profile and activity information, the ability to uninstall the LinkedIn application and tiles from Windows if users so decided with the assurance that Windows would not prompt them to reinstall the same. The ruling has come as the European Commission found out that Microsft is relatively a minnow in Customer Relationship Management Software services market with the market dominated by SAP, Oracle, and the clear leader, Salesforce.

Satya Nadella shared his view on LinkedIn stating he had been looking forward to this day since June and Microsoft has been working with LinkedIn to build an integration plan

Some of the immediate integration objectives are as follows:

• LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite
• LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center
• Enabling members drafting résumés in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn
• Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties
• Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365
• LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem
• Developing a business news desk across our content ecosystem and MSN.com
• Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365

Nadella highlighted the importance of LinkedIn and how it can add value to Microsoft and its users. He believes that this acquisition will help people develop new skills online, find new jobs and easily connect and collaborate with colleagues.

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