Salesforce lost to Microsoft in a bid for LinkedIn

‘Microsoft’, a multinational technology company Microsoft amazed everyone with an announcement of plans to acquire LinkedIn for more than $26 billion. But it wasn’t the only suitor as Salesforce wanted in, too.

Well, in the race Microsoft was not alone as ‘Salesforce’, the San Francisco-based software-as-a-service vendor was also interested in LinkedIn primarily for its recruiting business. To explain in details, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told “The company gave LinkedIn a “solid look” but was unable to match Microsoft’s huge offer.”

The Salesforce’s concern makes sense as information from the business-focused social network could have proved helpful to people working with Salesforce products. While, Microsoft has similar ambitions for LinkedIn, which it sees as a budding advantage to its Dynamics CRM and Office offerings in particular.

According to Recode, Salesforce approached LinkedIn when the company was already deep into negotiations with Microsoft. The bid by Salesforce was a combined cash and stock offer, while Microsoft’s final bid was all cash, and allows LinkedIn to continue operating separately. Well all together it is an interesting bit of backstory, especially given that Microsoft last year reportedly tried to buy Salesforce.

Salesforce also is no stranger to large acquisitions as two weeks ago it said it would buy e-commerce cloud service provider Demandware for $2.8 billion. “It’s the season of M&A,” Benioff told Recode.
While on the other side, the tech giant Microsoft is not slowing down its acquisition swiftness either. They recently announced that it had acquired chat app maker Wand for an undisclosed sum.