Bill Gates calls Microsoft’s $26 billion LinkedIn buy a ‘great transaction’

Salesforce reportedly failed to win the bid to acquire LinkedIn, with the bid beaten by technology giant Microsoft for $26.2bn earlier this week.

Salesforce.com’s offer price isn’t known, but Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS Group, said purchasing LinkedIn would have been a stretch for the company, which makes web-based software for salespeople. However, I convinced myself it was a reasonable deal.

In a letter to staff, Nadella said he believes that access to LinkedIn customers will benefit the sales of Microsoft products and in exchange, LinkedIn’s growth would be “accelerated”.

Bullish investors might see the LinkedIn acquisition as a sign Twitter is ripe for a purchase and take a position.

Rumors had been circulating around Wall Street that Microsoft was on the prowl to make an acquisition, but what motivated the company to officially sign the contract is the potential that LNKD brings to the table in terms of the cloud.

LinkedIn could help Microsoft accelerate its shift to the internet by giving it a large online property that has became the de facto standard for posting résumés online. Microsoft envisions a day soon when “LinkedIn won’t just be the place you go to look for a new job or network”, but competes with firms like Slack as the place where you interact with current colleagues.

In short, LinkedIn was at a peak and really needed a buyer like Microsoft or risk going clearly into decline.

So far, the company’s Microsoft 10 strategy seems to be working well, with more than 330 million devices now running on the operating system. Yammer had a SaaS (software-as-a-service) subscription model that fit into and complemented Microsoft’s Office 365.

And keep in mind that LinkedIn is a proven social media platform with no comparisons.

For the full year, the company is expecting revenue of $3.6 billion to $3.7 billion and earnings of $3.05-$3.20 a share.

The deal will be Microsoft’s biggest ever purchase and is Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s latest effort to push Microsoft in new directions.

If you have been following him, you will immediately notice how he is not like Ballmer.

Microsoft has yet to address the marketing-automation functionality that is now increasingly being embedded into the Salesforce cloud.

“Imagine the world where we’re no longer looking up at tech titans such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, and wondering what it would be like to operate at their extraordinary scale – because we’re one of them”. And the company’s “Surface” tablet/laptop hybrid has received great reviews and is a powerful and compact mobile alternative to other laptops and tablets on the market.