Data key to Microsoft's proposed €23bn acquisition of LinkedIn

Any probe into Microsoft’s proposed $26.2bn (€23.2bn) acquisition of professional social network LinkedIn, announced early last week, is likely to focus on the tie-up’s potential to leverage vast amounts of user data, the EU’s anti-competitive chief said yesterday.

The European Commission would look at whether “the data purchased in the deal has a very long durability and might constitute a barrier for others, or if they can be replicated so that others stand a chance to enter the market,” said Margrethe Vestager.

“We’ve done that kind of analysis in the past and it’s something we’re generally paying a lot of attention to,” she said in an interview in Copenhagen yesterday.

The Dane, who took office at the end of 2014, has signalled a willingness to delve more into how merging companies leverage the treasure trove of data at their disposal.

Data was one of the key considerations in the review of Facebook’s takeover of messaging service WhatsApp, even though her predecessor in the end concluded there were no data usage concerns.

Ms Vestager warned earlier this year that even though the regulator hasn’t found a data competition problem yet, “this doesn’t mean we never will”.

Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn in one of the largest technology industry deals on record, as the maker of Windows and Office software attempts to put itself at the centre of people’s business lives.

The deal is a way for Microsoft, which largely missed out on the consumer web boom dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook, to sprint ahead in social tools — in this case, for professionals.

When it announced the deal, Microsoft outlined a vision in which a person’s LinkedIn profile resides at the middle of other pieces of their work life, connecting with Windows, Outlook, Skype, Office productivity tools like Excel and PowerPoint, and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft’s bid for Linked In will require regulatory approval in the EU, US, Canada and Brazil.

LinkedIn’s analytics will help power data tools for Microsoft’s Dynamics, which competes with Salesforce in helping companies manage relationships with their customers.

Salesforce is believed to have been a rival potential bidder for LinkedIn in the process leading up to the acquisition by Microsoft.