Microsoft Offers Concessions To EU Regulators Eyeing Its $26.2 Billion LinkedIn Bid

Microsoft has offered concessions to EC competition regulators in the hopes of smoothing the way for its planned acquisition of LinkedIn. From an article on TechCrunch, submitted by an anonymous reader: An EC spokesperson confirmed it has received "a commitments proposal" from Microsoft but declined to comment further. Commitments, in EC antitrust nomenclature, refers to remedies a company can offer if the Commission has concerns a merger/acquisition may significantly affect competition. These can include proposing certain modifications to the project to guarantee continued competition on the market.The news comes two weeks after Salesforce (which itself tried to purchase LinkedIn) urged EU to take a closer look at Microsoft's takeover of LinkedIn.

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[unixisc]

Why, does Microsoft get to do what SCO once tried, and preclude others from continuing to create forks of Linux?

Re:

[Dutch Gun]

I'd have to look it up to be sure, but I'm betting the GPL would prohibit that.

MS, LinkedIn & EU

[unixisc]

How exactly does the EU get to decide whether one US company can acquire another?

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[alvinrod]

How is LinkedIn worth $26 billion dollars? If the EU rejects this Microsoft shareholders should write them a nice thank you letter. Microsoft doesn't exactly have the best history with acquisitions.

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[Harlequin80]

LinkedIn is very very well monetised. And it is on a recurring subscription basis.

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[gl4ss]

LinkedIn is very very well monetised. And it is on a recurring subscription basis.

No it isn't.

26 billion is way, way too much. They could have acquired ARM-holdings for the same money. that is very well monetized, very popular and very much in an uptick.

the deal values linkedin at 50 DOLLARS per user - including all non paying users. it's a stupid price. ms just bought it because they missed out on some other stuff and because the execs at ms spend way too much chatting away on linkedin, because lync sucks.

Now, if you're trying to say that Microsoft wouldn't make a stupid purchase becaus

Microsoft has a great history of acquisitions

[rsilvergun]

as long as you focus on their actual goal, which is buying up companies that could one day effectively compete. Microsoft is not, has not and never will be a technology company. Sun was. DEC was. Look where it got them.

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[gl4ss]

Microsoft is a technology company headed by a board that for some reason believed that their "platform" they were standing on was burning and they started buying "service" companies to counter that while at the same time burning their base.

let's face it, had they just made windows 10 into a regular operating system without all of the crap, had just put a decent start menu on there and had not broken all configurability about running services - they could have sold them at 100 bucks a pop quite a lot.

had the

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[tlhIngan]

How exactly does the EU get to decide whether one US company can acquire another?

Well, presuming Microsoft isn't just acquiring source code and hardware, but also user data, then the EU can tell Microsoft what it can do with that user data. So Microsoft can acquire Linked In just fine, but the EU can easily come around as say Microsoft must keep the Linked In information siloed (at least for EU members)

It's a Trap

[WillAffleckUW]

It's not actually a concession.

They were already found guilty

[Dunbal]

Did they ever pay that $300+ million fine to the EU, or did that just slide away?