Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

news.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 859 posts

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#731

Post by shostack »

ssharp wrote: post #635
dimino wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great , if you're right, because this is how we get to a place where we maintain our resumé in one place (LinkedIn) and don't have to play the whole "Please upload your resumé. Now please enter in all the details of your resumé." hellhole.

There is a Fortune 200 headquartered in my area that, by far, has the worst application process and software I've ever seen. Aside from REQUIRING you to type in information like your high school's address and your high school GPA, they also have pre-screening booby-traps which you may need to lie to get past (e.g. my wife was applying for an HR job there and they asked if she had a bachelor's degree in HR, which she…

Those sorts of processes are great for requiring information with people might not be inclined to give if they had a real person they were conversing with, particularly past salary questions that only accept an integer value.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#733

Post by zjaffee »

exelius wrote: post #299

Great move. IMO this is Microsoft making a play for HR managed services -- look for them to sign a big deal with ADP / BenefitsExpress / buy someone like Zenefits to complement this purchase. The power and value of LinkedIn is as a recruiting platform; and recruiting is a big-money problem that's only getting worse. If they can turn LinkedIn into a benefits management platform, that would be a huge win for Microsoft…

This is much bigger than that. Linkedin has around 7k employees in the bay area, far more than Microsoft currently has down here.

This acquisition will transform Microsoft into a major bay area Employeer, with >10k people working in the region.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#734

Post by engi_nerd »

MikeHolman wrote: post #727
martyvis wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for Business (and it's predecessor Lync) owns corporate voice and collaboration market

Skype for Business is just rebranded Lync. AFAIK there aren't any new features that were integrated across from Skype. Hell, it's still lync.exe.

We just 'upgraded' from Lync to Skype for Business and as far as I can tell it's exactly the same program with slightly different UI chrome.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#735

Post by shostack »

tajen wrote: post #293
_yosefk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS could, erm, look up those org charts on linkedin.com for $0 (indeed very useful at times.) What value is added by buying LinkedIn for $26G? How owning LinkedIn is going to add $1-1.5B/year (assuming eventually you want a P/E between, I dunno, 15 and 25), to MS's revenue? (I'm sure someone at MS has an answer to this, it's just that they haven't been tremendously successful in the past with their big acquisitions;…

> MS could look up those org charts That's the best remark in the whole thread. Employee poking at competitors. Sales teams looking up the right people to connect with. Thanks to the LinkedIn share button, like Facebook, they can have parts of your browsing history. I don't even know whether the purchase should be allowed.

Yeah, once integrated, I'd be worried if I was an MS employee using it to scout competitors and talk to recruiters.

This also gives MS some great data to possibly feed into the team that manages their investment portfolio. How valuable would it be to have a (admittedly not perfect) feed of employee growth/deflation for various companies? That would also provide a ton of leverage for future acquisitions, etc.

There's a LOT you can learn from LinkedIn data if you have access to the unfiltered data.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#736

Post by e1452654a78d238 »

oblio wrote: post #150

The comments here are hilarious, they really reveal the IT bubble. The only real complaint about this purchase would be that LinkedIn was overvalued. And I wouldn't bet on that since Microsoft surely sent a big team of their brightest cookies to make a valuation of the company. But other than that, LinkedIn fits: it is a corporate social network, if you will. I know that "corporate social network" is almost an oxymor…

Valuations are a funny thing. There's sooo much cash floating around in large companies coffers doing nothing (especially Microsoft's) that the numbers start meaning a whole lot of nothing after awhile.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#738

Post by shostack »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #667
threeseed wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there hasn't been enough talk about the companies LinkedIn acquired. Connectifier - recruiting intelligence Lynda - online learning FlipTop - predictive marketing RunHop - personalised content Refresh.io - relationship content surfacing These could be huge additions to Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana etc.

Have you ever been on the ground floor of a synergistic acquisition? In theory it should be easy to integrate data sources and reap the benefits. In practice what happens are year long efforts and organizational re-structurings every 3-6 months depending on what the cadence is with the end result being people being shuffled around and no benefits being reaped.

The restructuring is a huge part of it. Like Game of Thrones: Corporate Edition. Everyone is fighting to keep their job and use the opportunity to climb the ladder, and ensure their pet projects remain competitive. There are MASSIVE political interests from all levels and they can often eclipse the focus on actual integration and joining forces.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#739

Post by inopinatus »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #683
dpkrjb wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't Microsoft own a fund? Wouldn't they realistically send the same team to value Linkdin and Nokia?

Would you send the same people after the job they did last time?

This criticism is only valid if you can show that the due diligence team that worked Nokia also a) misreported the red flags / the enterprise value of the acquisition, and b) were responsible for mismanaging the post-merger integration.

A good deal of M&A goes ahead despite the warnings from the DD team. Sometimes it's a matter of CEO ego, sometimes a strategic long shot overruling the red flags.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#740

Post by shostack »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #232

Per LinkedIn's Form 8-K [1], LinkedIn has agreed to pay Microsoft a $725 million break-up fee if (a) LinkedIn's Board of Directors withdraws its recommendation of the merger, (b) LinkedIn accepts a superior offer, or (c) LinkedIn's stockholders turn the merger down. Note that LinkedIn may terminate the merger without paying the break-up fee if it avoids announcing an acquisition within one year of so terminating [2].…

Is it normal to have the clause about the shareholders turning the merger down? Seems like one helluva way to ram it down shareholders throats without much option to say no.
Post reply on HN