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Microsoft will buy LinkedIn for $196 per share, or about $26.2 billion. The respective companies' boards are alleged to have unanimously approved the sale. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will keep his title and report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. It is claimed that LinkedIn will continue to operate as an independent brand.
Reuters, CNBC, USA Today, WSJ, NYT.
It's quick and easy to delete your Linked-In account in ten steps.
Microsoft said Monday it was buying the professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in cash, a move that helps refocus the US tech giant around cloud computing and services.
With its biggest-ever acquisition and one of the largest in the tech sector, Microsoft takes a big step into the world of social networking and adds a new tool for its efforts to boost services for business.
"This deal brings together the world's leading professional cloud with the world's leading professional network," Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement. "It's clear to me that the LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business and an impressive network of more than 433 million professionals."
Prediction: Inaugural message to LinkedIn members will be, "Have you upgraded to Windows 10 yet?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Monday June 13 2016, @07:41PM
They day they announce that sale, I dumped that keyboard from all my devices, wrote a nasty-gram to swithkey, I had been a beta tester for them all along.
Swiftkey promised me none of my predictive text mining would be shared with anyone else. Then they snuck in a little "if swiftkey is acquired" clause a few months before the sale. I wrote them a nastygram when that happened. Then they sold out to Microsoft, lock stock and accumulated user material.
App Deleted. The stock keyboard that came on my HTC has pretty much the same predicition capabilities, same touch and/or swiping, and is equally configurable.
In similar news Semantic (yeah the virus scanner people) purchased Blue Coat Systems, a surveillance company. What could Possibly Go Wrong with that?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday June 13 2016, @07:58PM
So you knew they were in for-sale mode for a few months and you kept using the app until they actually sold? Were you expecting a cut as a beta tester?
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 13 2016, @08:32PM
I suspected. Not knew. I had noticed the same pattern when DropCam added that language, but was surprised when the sale went through to Google.
I admit I as lazy in getting off of Swiftkey ahead of the sale, not knowing in advance who the buyer was, or if there was indeed a sale in the offing.
But then I never gave permission for swiftkey to scan my emails or text messages to build a private dictionary, and forced it built it in real time.
So all they had was basically what I typed directly into that app, which they claimed did all its work right on the phone. (I tended to believe this, because it worked in airplane mode). Still I syspect there was some copying of this information to their servers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday June 13 2016, @08:58PM
It should be explicitly against the law to be able to acquire and integrate data via buying up a company. I'm betting that if tested in court by someone with enough money for the lawyers, it really already is and companies would have to ask for explicit consent.
The way things are going with these huge companies buying everything up, they're going to be impossible to avoid.