On Friday Microsoft reported that it is currently seeking the regulatory approval from the European Union for its LinkedIn acquisition. Microsoft spokesperson said that they have notified the Microsoft and LinkedIn deal to the European Union. On the news of filing, Reuters first reported that the commission has set the deadline of November 22 to review the case. If the commission would have any concerns then they can directly open an investigation on this matter. Citing antitrust issues, Salesforce.com has raised its concerns over this Microsoft LinkedIn deal to the European Union. Salesforce.ocm stressed that Microsoft can get unfair advantage with this deal by combining its software with the huge amount of LinkedIn data as this deal can exclude other companies from accessing LinkedIn’s vast amount of data. The European commission said that data is the main thing that the commission will consider first while assessing antitrust cases.
A company can just buy the rival in order to get hold of its data; even it hasn’t yet managed to turn out the data into money. A San-Francisco-based cloud computing company Salesforce has also made a bid for LinkedIn but it gets declined in favor of Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft told The Hill that this deal has been approved and reviewed well by other countries. This LinkedIn acquisition has been cleared and reviewed unconditionally in Canada, Brazil and US and thus Microsoft is confident that it will also obtain final regulatory approval from the European Union by the end of 2016. The investigation of European Union would end on November 22 with no extensions of the twenty-five working day timeline. It is assumed that the LinkedIn data of 433 million members will make things slow down. Salesforce who tries to buy LinkedIn has reportedly filed an objection with the European Union regarding this Microsoft LinkedIn deal. LinkedIn has also a local rival, which is a German professional social network, Xing. The company already went through the 10 years of antitrust investigation by the European Union that ended in 2009.