back to article Microsoft and LinkedIn: What the CEOs are planning

"Remember that dystopian view of the future in which technology displaces millions of people from their jobs? It's happening." So begins the less-than-cheery explanation of the huge $26.2bn acquisition of LinkedIn to staff by its CEO Jeff Weiner. Weiner appears to recognize that for many of his employees, being acquired by …

  1. Cris E

    What they actually said:

    "Ha ha ha ha ha! This is going to be great."

    (hears noise, turns quickly)

    "Whoops, Hi Nadella. Great doing business with you. Thanks for the check man, let's get together again sometime soon."

  2. Only me!
    WTF?

    50%

    Is it really worth 50% more than the share.....£175 per user?

    and it is chucking £166M in losses?

  3. inmypjs Silver badge

    "A big part of this deal is accelerating LinkedIn's growth"

    just like we did with Nokia.....

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: "A big part of this deal is accelerating LinkedIn's growth"

      They should very afraid of Microsoft culture. If it's not completely destroyed then it just turns to shit (e.g. Skype).

      Well the execs aren't afraid. They're laughing all the way to the bank.

      1. a_yank_lurker

        Re: "A big part of this deal is accelerating LinkedIn's growth"

        May be one should set a pool to see how long it takes Slurp to murder LinkedIn.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sing along now

    TAM, TAM, TAM, TAM - TAAAAM, wonderful TAM!

  5. Doctor Tarr

    Filters

    So how long before MS start 'managing' posts to filter out positive news and industry updates on their competitors. 'All for your benefit'

    LinkedIn will die a slow death.

  6. sorry, what?
    Unhappy

    Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

    Er, no.

    1. energystar
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

      Why LinkedIn Monetizers yes, and Microsoft Monetizers not?

      1. admiraljkb

        Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

        "Why LinkedIn Monetizers yes, and Microsoft Monetizers not?"

        LinkedIn is mostly neutral with no direct ties to anyone. Microsoft has a vested interest in Microsoft (as it should). So now, a site used mostly for professional networking* is all of a sudden owned by a very biased party.

        * so there HAVE been an awful lot of Facebook style posts there lately, which is forcing me to re-eval my relationship with them, prior to the MS buyout.

      2. sorry, what?
        WTF?

        Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

        @energystar, from my perspective I am on LinkedIn for my benefit - it's all about career progression and professional networking. Yes, LinkedIn monetize my details (which are not open to everyone, just those organizations, such as recruiters, willing to pay for the access - my public profile is relatively limited in its scope) but in the end I benefit too. I got my current job through being contacted on LinkedIn.

        Now tell me how I benefit from Microsoft's data slurping...

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

      If you are signed up then everyone else does, so why not them?

    4. MrTuK
      WTF?

      Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

      You hit the nail on the head m8, Its the user data it wants, all that user slurping data to add to its Win 10 data !!!

      Sheeeesh !

      I you have a LinkedIn account then I suggest destroying it and damn quickly before MacroSlurp gets its beady claws into it !

      I can see a lot of Win 7 and Linux users trashing their accounts ASAP - ROFL - Run for the hills !

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

        I you have a LinkedIn account then I suggest destroying it and damn quickly before MacroSlurp gets its beady claws into it !

        As far as I can tell from continued accuracy after I all but cleared out my profile, LinkedIn doesn't delete anything, it just makes it unavailable. As far as I can tell it's still hanging on to all the data I naïvely gave them (years ago before privacy became a real issue).

        1. Bloakey1

          Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

          "As far as I can tell from continued accuracy after I all but cleared out my profile, LinkedIn doesn't delete anything, it just makes it unavailable. As far as I can tell it's still hanging on to all the data I naïvely gave them (years ago before privacy became a real issue)."

          Facebook is the same unless you really go through the hoops to get it deleted. They still count your account as being active so they can 'monetize' your non activity.

          Sooooo, my Facebook account that I use because others need me to have one, is a non related cove and not one single fact therin is correct account wise.

      2. Wiltshire

        Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

        @MrTuk

        "I you have a LinkedIn account then I suggest destroying it and damn quickly before MacroSlurp gets its beady claws into it !"

        How might one do that?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

      Now, you shouldn't trust multi-million cooperation because first and foremost things evolve around their revenue and nothing else. But... I also think it's fair to say that out of all the companies out there Microsoft has proven themselves to be more caring about the individual users privacy than others. Well, at least that's the impression I've been getting.

      Just read their several user agreements. Heck, lets take a very easy example: my Windows phone. Every time I used a certain feature for the first time (keyboard, speech recognition, e-mail, etc.) I got asked if I would allow Microsoft access to some data for "improvements". You know, the commonly used "phone home" feedback. I even skipped a few because I was not in the mood for those questions because I wanted to get some work done.

      Each and every time the option turned out to be opt-in. It was disabled by default and the question was basically if I'd allow them to activate it. Most phones have all this stuff turned on by default, making it opt-out.

      Microsoft has done some severely stupid and intrusive things, I'm not denying any of that, but in this current situation (also looking at the several end user agreements) I'd sooner trust Microsoft with more personal data than, say, Google (even though, in all honesty, Google also never makes a secret out of it that they want to make money from using your data).

      Of course anything can change.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Do I really want Microsoft to have full access to my professional history?

        I'd sooner trust Microsoft with more personal data than, say, Google (even though, in all honesty, Google also never makes a secret out of it that they want to make money from using your data).

        I won't, and not because they have used opt-in a lot. I won't because they haven't got the first clue of security. Based on more than 2 decades worth of experience using Microsoft products, I have the impression that their idea of security is pretending that risks don't exist. I wouldn't want them, their products or their services anywhere near anything confidential or protectively marked.

        From a security perspective, Microsoft has never been anything but a malignant infestation so if you thought LinkedIn couldn't get any worse, just watch.

      2. JimC

        Re: I'd sooner trust Microsoft with more personal data than, say, Google

        Isn't that rather like "I'd rather have paratyphoid than typhoid"?

  7. energystar
    Childcatcher

    "We are in pursuit of a common mission centered on empowering people and organizations. " -Satya Nadella.

    'Microsoft is saving the company...'

    Well... We'll see. If Microsoft ACTUALLY empowering LinkedIn minions' environment, providing them with whatever necessary to effectively advance in the now Wider panorama. [Should I express likeness about Satya attitude?].

    MS should have a strong watch on LinkedIn' work ambiance, if really wishing to nourish that Team.

    1. energystar
      Angel

      If Microsoft actually nourish that Team...

      [How much does that amounts to, in view of the huge $26.2bn acquisition price?] It could send a tremendous message to the IT community: That they actually care about their own people.

  8. Mark 85

    So will MS employees now use LinkedIn to find new jobs? Or will management get wind of it about the time said employee slaps the <ENTER> key? New opportunities indeed.

    In spite of LinkedIn's financial problems, this just doesn't seem like it's going to end well if history is of any value.

    1. energystar
      Trollface

      So will MS employees now use LinkedIn to find new jobs?

      "Don't despair, Dearest Employee, available slots at Infrastructure Maintenance." </Mocking>

    2. Mikel

      Finding new work

      Presumably the LinkedIn team knows how to use their own product. Which is good, because they need to.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mining for Patents?

    Do Linked In have any?

    Edit: Yep - http://stks.freshpatents.com/Linkedin-Corporation-nm1.php

    Paris? Shoes probably got many...

  10. Joseph Haig
    Coat

    New advertising campaign

    "Is your career slowing down for no apparent reason? Maybe it needs a reboot to get it running smoothly again."

  11. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Does Satya Nadella know about...

    Embracing? [Endorse]

    Extending? [endorse]

    Extinguishing? [endorse]

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Does Satya Nadella know about...

      I rather prefer:

      Embrace, Extend, <Dalek voice>EXTERMINATE</Dalek voice>

      Just because I am a fan of the Doctor

  12. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "total addressable markets (TAM)"

    s/T/SP/g

  13. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Bye Bye

    I've been wondering for some time why I subscribed to linkedin. I guess it's time to linkout.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. Camilla Smythe

    Today it Feels Good to be Unemployable and Poor.

    Not only do I not have to post a bullshit CV to LinkedIn I also get to run Linux.

    Fuckin' Karma.

    My sympathies to all of you left in the 'rat race'... I'll just get back to my Roasted Sausage, Bacon and Cheese Mashed Potato Bake. If Lester is interested I'll publish the recipe on FacePlant, assuming he cannot work it out for himself and I have a FacePlant account.

  15. Alistair
    Coat

    Windows 10 Update

    Software, Linked In, Microsoft Edition.

  16. lsces

    Glad I did not give in and set up an account?

    But where do we setup the alternate M$ free version ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Glad I did not give in and set up an account?

      Anywhere you can afford creating and hosting this type of database driven critter. [Just as obviously, while avoid being patent-whipped.]

  17. Howard Hanek
    Childcatcher

    History Repeats Itself

    Let me guess? Something about synergies and getting ahead of the curve and being on the right side of history.

    The same thing Time/Warner and AOL's CEO's said........

  18. PNGuinn
    Facepalm

    Wow, just WOW!

    "We are in pursuit of a common mission centered on empowering people and organizations. Along with the new growth in our Office 365 commercial and Dynamics businesses, this deal is key to our bold ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes,"

    Slurp finally got the windows 10 bullshit generator working!

    Finally time to upgrade, folks?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Wow, just WOW!

      "Slurp finally got the windows 10 bullshit generator working!"

      Finally? The bullshit generator is the first deliverable of any corporate project.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    People still use LinkedIn?

    Man is that yesterdays tech. Sorta like FriendsReUnited... Cool for a while then? Passe and then totally uncool.

    I'm actually glad that MS has wasted their money again.

    Anon because (shame on me) I actually have a LinkedIn account. Honest Guv, it was only created so that I could view prospective employee's details. It thinks I am still at my job before the last one so it is bang uptodate.

    I'll delete it once the deal has closed. Thank god I'm retiring soon.

    No Windows 10 and no LinkedIn. What's not to like eh? {don't answer that...}

  20. Dave 126

    All this coverage of this acquisition on the The Register, yet I haven't seen anyone make the point that potentially LinkdIn's biggest competitor is the long established recruitment agency industry. They were making money from their own silos of user/client-provided data long before Facebook et al were on the scene, agencies that would take a percentage of someone's earnings. What value would they add? Why, no more than consult their databases and liaises with employers and employees.

    LinkdIn has the potential to disrupt that - if anything else, it could automate the process of checking references, from the point of view of recruiters.

    This isn't my point of view, but one that given to me in a pub by the head of recruitment for a large company a few years back.

    1. Bloakey1

      <snip>

      "This isn't my point of view, but one that given to me in a pub by the head of recruitment for a large company a few years back."

      Ahhh, told to you in a pub and I just read it on the Inertnet <sic> so therefore it must be factual and true. Nice one!!!

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      LinkdIn's biggest competitor is the long established recruitment agency industry.

      I thought recruiters were LinkedIn's paying customers, since they paid for the privilege of being able to dig through the database.

  21. PhilipN Silver badge

    Yawn. Usual MS buzzwords

    "empowering". .... "get [stuff] done"

    The slavishness (no pun intended) with which MS lersistently re-cycles its mantras is worthy of Stalin.

    Does anyone know how they enforce the prescribed MS dictionary? Is there an office at Redmond which has the power to veto any public pronouncement which does not use the mandated spin terms?

  22. Nick Kew
    Facepalm

    "Microsoft SEO Satya Nadella" (sic)

    A Freudian slip for our times?

  23. harmjschoonhoven
    Coat

    just checked LiN:

    found 2 posts.

    1) Open Sourcing Photon ML LinkedIn's Scalable Machine Learning Library for Spark. Machine learning is a key component of LinkedIn's relevance-driven products. We use machine learning to train the ranking algorithms for our feed, advertising, recommender systems (such as People You May Know), email optimization, search engines, and more.

    2) "registreer je voor het webinar met kenner Yorick Dokter" sponsored by Microsoft Nederland (never saw this s** before).

    1. Bloakey1
      Joke

      Re: just checked LiN:

      <snip>

      "2) "registreer je voor het webinar met kenner Yorick Dokter" sponsored by Microsoft Nederland (never saw this s** before)."

      Yep, it is all double Dutch to me as well old chap.

  24. ChadD

    Linkedin is so last week. You can find a killer job without it if you know where to look http://helpmebro.com/posts/W6MM8FpBXO

  25. Paul J Turner

    Fully independent entity within Microsoft

    So there'll be no irresistible temptation to fiddle with any of this tech? - https://engineering.linkedin.com/architecture/brief-history-scaling-linkedin - for about a month at least I'm guessing.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Fully independent entity within Microsoft

      From the architecture piece it would seem that at the tech level the synergy is that MS get access to LinkedIn's tech, which MS will take and embed into Office 365 and Dynamics, which in turn will be used to host LinkedIn on Azure.

  26. Mikel

    The destruction of value is astounding

    Mind boggling. Imagine what useful things they might have done with that money.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The destruction of value is astounding

      By Microsoft? I need some of your drugs.

      1. Mikel

        Re: The destruction of value is astounding

        Theoretically.

        That is enough money to wire much of the US with gigabit fiber.

  27. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Emails hosted on Outlook servers

    No need to give your password now to see who you already know on LinkedIn.

    Ok maybe these details are (hopefully) salt/encrypted on MS servers. But what of the MetaData? To send emails MS needs to know to whom you are sending messages to. This instantly connects you to anyone you correspond with. So what? Not important to you, you know who you correspond with. But what about all of the people connected to you (or ditto to your correspondent)? Do they know you are corresponding with this person? You could be head-hunting a competitor's employee. How nice of MS to tell your competitor's MD that there is a link between you and that head hunted employee. It blows confidentiality out of the water.

    Pundits may find this useful when determining where the next take-over bid is occurring, even during the initial seeds of talks. Looking at the linkages between different people will become an interesting tool. You elicit information from a CEO. You then become linked to that person. Now watch who that CEO becomes linked with.

    1. Bloakey1

      Re: Emails hosted on Outlook servers

      <snip>

      "Pundits may find this useful when determining where the next take-over bid is occurring, even during the initial seeds of talks. Looking at the linkages between different people will become an interesting tool. You elicit information from a CEO. You then become linked to that person. Now watch who that CEO becomes linked with."

      That is already being done on various levels. You can't beat a bit of frequency and pattern analysis for tracking down people and there intentions. Also good for decryption etc. but that is another kettle of monkeys and barrel of fish.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time to move to linux mint and become linked out.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nadella believes LinkedIn is rent-a-coder...

    My guesses:

    1) Nadella believes LinkedIn works like rent-a-coder, just not only developers. Expect it to be full of cheap consultants from India in a short time. They will appear in Office instead of Clippy.

    2) Given the premium, expect someone "close to Nadella" to have harvested LinkedIn shares in the past months. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I would ask for an investigation. It doesn't make sense to pay so much for a company well past its peak and with no real perspective of a boost in revenues, and without competition to buy it.

    3) Nadella wants to transform Microsoft from a tech company to a "social" (data harvesting and reselling) one. Not a good impression to give when you want to sell "cloud" services too. Or maybe it's a new business model - "pay money, or you'll pay with your data (some we will harvest anyway)".

    4) Nadella is more clueless than Ballmer, and that tells a lot. He has no real idea how to move the company forward, no "vision", thereby he has to "copy", and he does copy wrong. He's also quite egotist, I'm quite sure he wanted to kill Lumia phones because it wasn't an idea of his. Ballmer and even a CEO like Carly Fiorina will look a genius after Nadella.

  30. MachDiamond Silver badge

    I wish I had a seven segment brain

    Then I could put the following into a matrix:

    In the aerospace business, we call what's about to happen as a powered decent into the terrain.

    For far less than $26b, M$ could have built their own site and had money left over for a World Cup/Super Bowl barrage of ads telling everybody how great it is. (it's like suggesting that Apple buy Tesla Motors for $30b + when they can develop their own car for far less.)

    Scenario, M$ loots the database and merges it into their own info-farm, crashes the company and writes off the whole purchase price (takes a charge against earnings or other biz-speak term). Pricing intangibles is a voodoo art and I'm sure they could argue in a tome to rival War and Peace that the database is worth nothing so they can take the entire purchase price as a loss.

    I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a laptop being stolen from a car with the entire LinkedIn database on the hard drive (or SSD if they're hip).

    M$ is a has-been company that seems to be thrashing around to find themselves again and "makes" 10 figure mistakes trying to get into markets that are already established and dominated by just a few players (mobile phones, IOS vs. Android, Zune vs. iPod, etc). I find it hard to believe that M$ is $26b stupid so soon after the Nokia debacle. There must be something there that they covet, but I don't think that it's the LinkedIn business as a whole.

    My concern is for Lynda.com that was just acquired by LinkedIn. I can live without LinkedIn, but Lynda.com is an awesome resource for training and I use them a lot.

    Thinking of canceling your LinkedIn account? Don't!. Start removing a little bit of information each month. A past job, a contact or two until there is nothing left but a shell. Almost nobody will delete your information when you close your account. It simply goes in a private section and still gets sold to data miners like Spokeo. Canceling may prompt a snapshot and archive routine, but slowly editing looks just like somebody keeping their info up to date. I might be wrong, but ….

    1. Tom 64
      Coat

      Re: I wish I had a seven segment brain

      > "I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a laptop being stolen from a car with the entire LinkedIn database on the hard drive"

      LinkedIn have already been breached, multiple times. From the first page on google:

      2016: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/24/linkedin_password_leak_hack_crack/

      2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_LinkedIn_hack

      Not that your data will be any safer in Microsoft's hands. Is their outlook.com password policy still only allowing maximum of 16 characters? Hello NSA, nice bruteforce script you got there :D

      And that price... still can't get over it. Guess there is value in spam networks after all.

      I'll get my coat, I'm off to work on my spam network business plan.

  31. Mystic Megabyte
    FAIL

    Spam

    All the Linkedin invites that I get are marked as spam, MS just wasted a lot of money. Also, only Linux used here!

  32. Potemkine Silver badge

    Muahahahahahaha!

    "I'm rich now band of losers, and you can all go to hell"

    Good luck for Linkedin workers, many of them will have to find another job in the following months.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don;t have a good feelign about this...

    Microsoft have a consistent history of f***ing up their big acquisitions - Hotmail and Nokia spring to mind.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Don;t have a good feelign about this...

      Be fair.

      Hotmail was crap from the start. And Nokia had been attempting suicide for at least two years before MS.

  34. zebthecat

    Hmm...

    "He assures them, with apparent belief, that the company will remain independent of the Beast of Redmond."

    I give it two years max

    1. Mikel

      Re: Hmm...

      Three months. No doubt the irreconcilable differences have already begun on first contact between the actual teams, not the executives.

  35. Avatar of They
    Facepalm

    Spotted the mistake.

    "We would partner on how best to leverage this extraordinary combination of assets while pursuing a shared mission."

    Shouldn't that read as

    "We would partner on how best to leverage this extraordinary combination of other peoples assets and how to monetise it, while pursuing a shared mission of keeping my job."

    FTFY

  36. GrapeBunch

    Sounds like Dilbert's boss.

    and an opportunity for somebody, especially one of MS's competitors, to re-invent a careers-seeking, job networking, with peripheral social networking thingie. They need the resources to scale it, and the affability to make it only as annoying as LinkedIn already is--for MS will surely take it in the direction they know best.

  37. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    As a sidenote - " ... creating economic opportunity will be the defining issue of our time ... " - has there ever been a time where creating economic opportunity hasn't been an issue? Humans have to eat, you know.

  38. Ted's Toy

    Will delete my link and mark LinkedIn as Junk

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like