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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#481

Post by JustSomeNobody »

ivoras wrote: post #11

Oh, I can just imagine how the process went at MS: * Exec A: Social things are Good (coming to the conclusion about 10 years too late) * Exec B: Shall we create our own Google+? * Exec C: No, that didn't turn out that well for Google. Let's buy something existing. * Exec B: Ok, I've Googled a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by list price, but really we'll need to come up with a strat…

The enterprise world loves LinkedIn. Guess who makes a poop ton of money catering to the enterprise?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#482

Post by andyjohnson0 »

bogomipz wrote: post #325

Can someone explain how Microsoft bought a publicly traded company? Shareholders own Linked in, so did they buy a controlling interest and or is there currently a tender offer circulating for all holders of the common stock? Also curious that MS is valuing it Linked stock at $196 dollars a share when before the weekend it was trading at $133. Did they believe it was undervalued by almost 50% then? That seems dubious.

In the announcement Hoffman is described as the "controlling shareholder". Presumably this controlling interest [1] gives him the ability to agree to the sale without necessarily having the agreement of the other shareholders.

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/controllinginterest.asp

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#485

Post by dyim »

marcosdumay wrote: post #445
knodi123 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose it depends on which team gets the job? I bet! The number of people in here that think a company with >118,000 employees is always going to make the same tech and design decisions is baffling.

That's because many decisions are caused by the environment, not the people. In the meaning that it's still the people doing them, but everybody on the same environment tend to choose similar things, and when in another environment, those same people tend to choose different things. This is actually documented on management literature, with empirical studies and quantitative results.

That's a great point - though I bet there are many microclimates within Microsoft :)

Would love to read some of these management studies; it sounds intuitive but (as always) it's much easier to grok the bigger picture with concrete examples. Can you point me to some of the literature?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#486

Post by DanBC »

ajmurmann wrote: post #452
slig wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a world where a forced update breaks my parents' computer that was working perfectly fine before.

As opposed to a world full of legacy systems with security holes that are part of botnets.

Windows 8 was released in late 2012.

What can't be fixed by security updates, as opposed to OS upgrade?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#487

Post by Karunamon »

torgeek wrote: post #449
MzHN wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype has gone downhill ever since their first acquisition, and they've been acquired at least three times already. If anything, MS is starting to slowly take it to a better direction, even though it is nowhere near the ideology of the original Skype. I believe that LinkedIn will end up being a similar case, where it will continue to suck, but you'll see some slow progress eventually. EDIT: As pointed out, LinkedIn w…

didnt microsoft remove the p2p functionality and made skype highly centralized?

Yes, but speaking from experience, that change resulted in a huge improvement in call quality. The P2P architecture is nice but leaves you at the mercy of your nearest node's internet connection and usage.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#488

Post by JustSomeNobody »

cylinder wrote: post #480
ivoras wrote: post #11

Oh, I can just imagine how the process went at MS: * Exec A: Social things are Good (coming to the conclusion about 10 years too late) * Exec B: Shall we create our own Google+? * Exec C: No, that didn't turn out that well for Google. Let's buy something existing. * Exec B: Ok, I've Googled a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by list price, but really we'll need to come up with a strat…

Satya & Weiner (there's your sitcom title) were just on Bloomberg and explained the acquisition. I'm not exaggerating when I said I really could not understand what they were saying. It felt like they were just saying buzzwords without any verbs in between. I feel like I am in a strange wonderland.

I really don't understand why business people use so many buzzwords. Do they really think we're all like, "Yeah, man! Cool!"? Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows sentences filled with business buzzwords are meaningless bull poop.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#489

Post by Silhouette »

overgryphon wrote: post #474
prirun wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a store once, and their cash registers were down because a Windows update was forced on them. One was working, 2 weren't. A store manager was on the phone with some tech support guy and was not happy.

They shouldn't have been using the consumer version. I can sympathize, but that business both violated their license and ignored nine months of news and popups about the windows 10 update.

It seems we're talking about cash registers here. If their software happened to be running on Windows but the business bought them as self-contained devices, I'm not sure why the business staff would necessarily even have realised Windows was running on them, never mind been responsible for any software licence agreements or the like. The supplier of those cash registers might have made mistakes here, but the business staff are well justified in being upset at critical devices stopping working because of something like this.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#490

Post by bduerst »

mrweasel wrote: post #269
hammerbrostime wrote: post #94

I'm surprised by the amount of negativity about the deal here on HN. It seems like an excellent match. I could see LinkedIn as an asset for Microsoft anywhere in the realms of work collaboration and HR. No other social network besides LinkedIn comes close to complimenting MicroSoft's wheelhouse of enterprise utility.

It think the negativity is mostly due to the price tag. If I was a shareholder I would be furious over Microsoft paying $26billion for a money losing company. Even if Microsoft see some potential the rest of us aren't, and we have to assume that they are, they still need to find a way to turn a profit on the deal. Given that they bought Nokia, only to shut it down, more or less, it would be reasonable for the shareho…

Yeah, even assuming Microsoft cuts losses and makes the company profitable again through some product integrations, it's still a huge price tag.

LinkedIn has stalled growth and brought in $2.9 billion in rev last year, which means that all things constant it will take nine years to cover the $26 B price tag.

Microsoft must really have some big plans for it to justify the costs.

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